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The Amazing Rise of WebKit Mobile
The Google Android SDK, released yesterday, confirmed what had been long been rumored: Google’s mobile platform uses WebKit, an open source browser engine . “We have been working on our mobile implementation of WebKit for quite some time,” someone from the Android team wrote on The Surfing Safari, the official blog of the WebKit community.
Given how much Google has helped Firefox, its choice of WebKit strikes me as hugely significant for the browser market. Such an endorsement is only going to increase the importance of WebKit’s growing presence in the mobile ecosystem.
WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that’s used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. WebKit’s HTML and JavaScript code began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE.
Even though Opera is still the mobile browser to beat, WebKit-based browsers are fast becoming a common presence in some of the newer mobile platforms. In addition to Google’s Android, WebKit has found a home inside the Apple iPhone platform as well as the Nokia-backed Symbian S60 phones, such as the N and E Series devices.
If you take the total number of the N and E Series phones and iPhones, my back-of-the-envelope (and highly unscientific) estimates put the number of handsets using WebKit-based browsers at over 30 million.
In the desktop domain, the growing popularity of Mac OS X computers has resulted in the WebKit-based Safari grabbing between 3 and 5 percent of the total browser market share, thereby making it the third most popular browser after Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
The real opportunity for WebKit seems to be in the mobile world, where no browser has been able to establish an IE-like hegemony. Sam Sidler, who has been working on the open source Camino browser, in a recent essay wrote,
Mobile browsing is still very much in its infancy, but innovation on the mobile platform is moving faster than ever. What you are able to do today on your cell phone (surf the Web, view digital media) isn’t anywhere near what you’ll be doing in five years
The growing popularity of WebKit, according to some of my browser guru sources, is due to the fact that it’s easier to code for compared with other browser engines. It also has a well-organized and smaller code base, which is easier to manage. Finally, it is quite fast and renders faster, which makes it attractive to developers.
More importantly, however, WebKit has a smaller footprint, which means it has less memory and CPU requirements and as such, is ideal for the mobile environments. Apple’s (and now Google’s) mobile ambitions have prompted the company to devote a lot of resources to WebKit, turning it into a viable mobile platform. In comparison, IE Challenger, Firefox and its Gecko engine are only getting started in their mobile efforts. They’ll have to cover a lot of ground before they even catch up with WebKit.
Nokia Buys Navteq For $8 Billion, Bets Big On Location-Based Services
Nokia (NOK), the Finnish mobile phone giant with nearly a third of the global handset market, has decided to bet big on location-based services (LBS), and is buying Chicago-based digital map company NAVTEQ (NVT) for $8.1 billion. That works out to about $78 a share. This is one of Nokia’s largest purchases to date — the Finnish mobile giant has a mixed track record when it comes to acquisitions.
This is also the second megabillion dollar buyout in the maps (LBS) space. Earlier this year, Dutch GPS device maker TomTom bought Tele Atlas for $2.8 billion.
Nokia is paying 32 times EBITDA while TomTom paid around 27 times EBITDA. Since the deal for Tele Atlas hasn’t closed, TomTom might have to pay a little more. The deal may have some negative ramifications for guys like Garmin, a NAVTEQ customer, but it is too early to say what Nokia’s strategy will be. Nokia had also released Nokia 330, a GPS-based navigation device targeting the European market, and so could find itself competing with Garmin.
One thing is clear: the company wants to diversify its reliance on the handset business and move into software and services, where its brand positioning can really help. (Related: Nokia goes web 2.0) NAVTEQ is Nokia’s second purchase in the LBS space; last year it acquired gate5, a small German startup, for an undisclosed amount. Nokia also has a deal with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Trimble.
“Location-based services are one of the cornerstones of Nokia’s Internet services strategy,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokai’s president and CEO. “By joining forces with NAVTEQ, we will be able to bring context and geographical information to a number of our Internet services with accelerated time to market.”
According to iSuppli, there will be 250 million GPS-enabled phones shipping per annum by 2010. According to some estimates, the number of mobile users accessing maps and related information on their mobile phones is going to grow to about 43 million in 2012 from 4 million in 2007.
Maps on Mobile is apparently something people want. In a recent chat, Google (GOOG) vice president Marissa Mayer told us that Google Maps usage soared after the introduction of the iPhone.
Will iPhone spark wireless wars?
Roy, a doorman for my apartment building, stopped me this morning to chit chat. Knowing my affection for all new mobile phones, I wasn’t surprised that he asked to play around with my Nokia N95. “Are you going to buy the iPhone?” he asked, seeking a second opinion since he has already made up his mind and is going to buy an iPhone.
Though he doesn’t have an iPod right now, he thinks an iPhone would give him two devices in one, despite the high price tag. He is seemingly undeterred by the questionable battery life. (One of the reasons why I have a more wait-and-see attitude towards this Apple device.) He isn’t the only one - as the interest in iPhone seems to be on an upswing.
Even if you disregard the rumors and fan sites - the population at large seems to have a considerable interest in the iPhone, indicated by the total search volume for keyword “iPhone.” According to Hitwise, a research group that tracks Internet traffic trends, iPhone related searches represent over 0.002% of total Internet searches per week for past three weeks, with iPhone release date and price being the specific information folks are looking for. (In comparison, MySpace was the #1 query and had 1.16% of the total search volume.) Just as an unscientific indicator the search volume is a good indicator of increasing commercial appeal of the device.
The big question, however, is how does iPhone impact the wireless market at large — and whether it will result in a market share shift, putting AT&T at an advantage.
AT&T is betting big on this device and is hoping to pull ahead of its rivals by riding the iPhone express. AT&T and Apple are going to be launching a big media blitz to promote the iPhone, and according to UBS Research, it will be a major reason why AT&T will be able to add approximately 2.8 million gross postpaid subscribers in the third and fourth quarters of 2007.
If Apple’s guidance of 10 million units in 18 months hits the target, UBS estimates that 2 million iPhones will be sold in the U.S. in the first six months of the launch. That works out to about 18% of AT&T’s post-paid additions and upgrades, UBS estimates. But these 2 million will have to come from somewhere - probably switchers from other wireless services.
At the end of Q1 2007, there were about 170 million postpaid wireless subscribers in the U.S., with Verizon the largest carrier (56 million) with AT&T at #2 with about 51 million, followed by Sprint (41 million) and T-Mobile bringing up the rear at 22 million. (These numbers don’t reflect wholesale and prepaid customers.)
So 2 million units don’t mean much in market share — a little 1.1% market share gain for AT&T in the first six months, but it is the residual impact that might cause the big upheaval in the wireless market.
There are some who believe that since iPhone isn’t going to get as much subsidy as other devices, AT&T can pass those subsidies to even further subsidize non-Apple phones, and making its service more attractive. That would be one way to capture the increased foot traffic to AT&T stores.
Will Verizon and Sprint take this lying down? Of course not, and will launch their own price subsidies, discount plans or whatever it takes to hang on to their subscribers. And whatever happens, consumers will come out ahead — nothing wrong with that. And even if Roy doesn’t end up buying the iPhone, he still might get a good deal somewhere else.
Photos by Niall Kennedy via Flickr.
Will Skype save Nokia Internet Tablets?
Nokia’s Internet tablet efforts – the 770, and more recently, the N800 – have produced a mixed bag of results. While the techies have been enthusiastic about the Linux-based tablets, the consumer electronics crowd (and buyers) hasn’t been overwhelmingly enthusiastic.
On Tuesday, some Nokia folks stopped by in our makeshift offices and articulated their vision for the tablet series. The company is betting that as more web services start to support the platform, the devices will gain in popularity. The Finnish phone maker believes that tablets are the next evolution of computing, and as web service matures, these Internet-centric devices will gain more traction.
And one such service is Skype. Nokia is expecting that Skype support will make the device more alluring, especially in the overseas markets.
The Nokia N800 is a nifty looking device that is very capable when it comes to making VoIP phone calls – we use Gizmo client all the time. Google Talk hasn’t exactly become our favorite, but like most we think Skype could actually make us use the device a lot more, especially for quick calls to other Skypers.
“Skype is certainly the most popular,” says Ari Virtanen, Nokia’s vice president of convergence products. Nokia will release in an early beta (without SkypeIn/SkypeOut support) in a few weeks, but the full version of Skype client is expected later this summer, Virtanen says. The Skype support, if nothing else, makes the N800 more attractive to folks who don’t want to lug a laptop along on short day trips.
We see N800 becoming a good way to consume music from subscription services such as Rhapsody and Napster. Nokia folks showed off the Rhapsody service, it was simple, easy to use and music streamed quite nicely over an EVDO-powered Wi-Fi network. Nokia wants to add more such services: Yahoo Music, MSN and Yahoo Messenger amongst others to boost the utility of the device. “It is an Internet services based platform,” says Virtanen.
“The world of computing has gone from mainframes to desktops to now laptops,” says Virtanen, “and the next step is tablets.” That future is going to take a lot longer than either Nokia or anyone else can imagine.
The sales register isn’t exactly jangling with regularity. Nevertheless, Nokia plans to add more retail outlets to its sales channel, especially in the US. Currently the device is sold online, and at Fry’s and CompUSA.
The big boost for N800’s descendants will come when Sprint launches its WiMAX network, sometime in 2008. At higher speeds, most web services are going to become easily accessible, and the N800 type devices will see their utility go up.