Massive growth in mobile browser use

The mobile browser market will grow to 1.5 billion units worldwide by 2013, due to emerging browser software that can take advantage of the latest 'Web 2.0' technologies.

ABI Research, said in its new study, The Mobile Browser Market that smartphones incorporating browsers, which support the latest capabilities such as AJAX and RSS, as well as websites optimised for viewing on a mobile device would account for the majority of growth in this sector over the next five years.

It predicted that, while a large number of phones today still use browsers with very limited web browsing capabilities, growth in the open internet browser (OIB) segment for mobile will increase from 76 million in 2007 to nearly 700 million browsers delivered in 2013.

Opera

Openwave

ACCESS

Webkit

Skyfire

"Ultimately, the long-term trend away from native applications to web-based applications means browser and web services engines will be increasingly important components in the mobile environment," he said.