Mobile web browser vendors and their web sites

15 Jun 2004

How committed are mobile web browser vendors to delivering mobile web content? I made it really easy and only visited the mobile web browser vendor with their own browser. The results are as follows:

Access

Access makes Netfront, the mobile web browser found on just about every i-mode mobile. I visited http://www.access.co.jp with Docomo's P900i running Netfront 3.0 and was served mobile content via the meta tag refresh property.

Well done Access.

Nokia

I first visited http://www.nokia.com with a Nokia 7600 running their latest XHTML browser and got a "Memory full" error indicating I was being served up far too much desktop content. I then visited http://www.nokia.co.jp and got the mobile version of Club Nokia.

Well done Nokia Japan but their parent site needs some work.

Openwave

Openwave's Mobile Browser is on just about every non-Docomo mobile in Japan. I visited http://www.openwave.com with Vodafone's V801SA running Openwave Mobile Browser 6.2 and got mostly illegible desktop content.

Bad Openwave.

Opera

I visited http://www.opera.com with DDI's AH-K3001V running Opera 7 and was served up mobile formatted content via the CSS media property. Although the handheld stylesheet formats the page for mobiles, the content is still largely inappropriate for mobiles with links to download the latest desktop Opera version.

Well done Opera but some work is required serving not just mobile formatted content but mobile appropriate content as well.