1.5 billion mobile handsets sold in 2011, nearly one third are smartphones. Nokia is still top dog for handsets, but Samsung and Apple sold more smartphones.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 17 August, 2009 - 20:28.
Teens usually have far more disposable income than most of the rest of us. Are operators worried that people aren't using enough mobile data? Surely the answer lies in making the data more useful and accessible.
I have worked with phone browsers since before the first WAP phones (I worked on MME on the SonyZ5), the problems for these browsers are many fold but include:
a) What is there on the WWW that is actually usefully viewed on a tiny screen with poor navigation? The answer is not a fat lot, even less now than before, few of the browsers issue a real identity because they need to pretend to be a desktop to get any content, and even if they do issue the right identity the servers fail to make any allowance for the screen size (such as sending scaled down pictures) or making allowance for the connection speed by not doing massive tables, wasting huge amounts of data by sending numerous font bigger, font smaller commands).
b) The navigation on most browsers is terrible - MME made everything fit to a screen width to allow the user to scroll up and down with the 'jog dial', but most require you to scroll left and right / up and down using a terribly unergonomic button which requires you to break your thumb to reach it and then has a tendancy to 'click' at the wrong point.
c) Most browsers don't allow the user to click to the next page as soon as they see the link they want, and most don't do a partial draw.
d) The operators fail to make useful data available
e) The operators seem wedded to the idea that they need to filter 'adult content' and otherwise restrict surfing - even when actually they are filtering out normal non adult and useful content (vodafone are very very bad at this - I was trying to use a vodafone dongle to check some normal pages to be told their filtering server was dead so they were preventing me from seeing it!!!!! Apparently for my own good - when what would have been useful was being able to see the content).
f) Walled gardens - operators with these just deserve to be put on Nasas latest rocket and given a one way ticket to outerspace. Or better still to go out of business and be shot.
We don't need marketing to teens what we need is better browsers and more useful content.
Teens usually have far more disposable income than most of the rest of us. Are operators worried that people aren't using enough mobile data? Surely the answer lies in making the data more useful and accessible.
I have worked with phone browsers since before the first WAP phones (I worked on MME on the SonyZ5), the problems for these browsers are many fold but include:
a) What is there on the WWW that is actually usefully viewed on a tiny screen with poor navigation? The answer is not a fat lot, even less now than before, few of the browsers issue a real identity because they need to pretend to be a desktop to get any content, and even if they do issue the right identity the servers fail to make any allowance for the screen size (such as sending scaled down pictures) or making allowance for the connection speed by not doing massive tables, wasting huge amounts of data by sending numerous font bigger, font smaller commands).
b) The navigation on most browsers is terrible - MME made everything fit to a screen width to allow the user to scroll up and down with the 'jog dial', but most require you to scroll left and right / up and down using a terribly unergonomic button which requires you to break your thumb to reach it and then has a tendancy to 'click' at the wrong point.
c) Most browsers don't allow the user to click to the next page as soon as they see the link they want, and most don't do a partial draw.
d) The operators fail to make useful data available
e) The operators seem wedded to the idea that they need to filter 'adult content' and otherwise restrict surfing - even when actually they are filtering out normal non adult and useful content (vodafone are very very bad at this - I was trying to use a vodafone dongle to check some normal pages to be told their filtering server was dead so they were preventing me from seeing it!!!!! Apparently for my own good - when what would have been useful was being able to see the content).
f) Walled gardens - operators with these just deserve to be put on Nasas latest rocket and given a one way ticket to outerspace. Or better still to go out of business and be shot.
We don't need marketing to teens what we need is better browsers and more useful content.