Mobile browsing is exploding- Are the top websites Android-ready?
The new generation of web enabled mobile browsers have really allowed the mobile internet to explode- ABI Research predicted way back last year in November that the number of handsets with rich internet experience is going to increase 5 fold to 530 million by 2013.
Personally I think that figure is low, mostly because Android has reduced the licensing cost of rolling out the software for a smartphone to zero thus by the time 2015 comes around pretty much every phone will be a smartphone and have the rich internet experience.
But what makes up the traffic to the top websites?
Thanks to Statcounter.com- we can produce a good basic picture as to the current state of play in the new burgeoning mobile browser wars.
As you can see the Iphone/ Itouch combination has the largest share of the market, closely followed by Opera, Nokia and Blackberry. Android is still languishing down at the bottom, however as its the new kid on the block, I wasn’t expecting a massive effect just yet.
The main point to take away from the stats above is that webkit powered browsers make up more than 50% of the web traffic from mobile devices so its time the major sites start to look at how they can optimize their web user experience for the portable device.
(Edit: Interesting point noted that blackberry users clearly don’t browse the internet much considering the number of blackberrys in the market vastly outstrips the number of iphones yet produces a relatively small slice of the browsing share)
The 6 most visited sites in the UK:
How I have rated the sites: 1 point for each of the following:
- Having a site that renders error free on the android browser
- Having a specific mobile site template that is compatible with webkit.
- Having a mobile template that has the same functionality as the regular website.
- Allowing users to exit the template and access the original site
- 1 bonus point- General Ease of use on the mobile device.
1. Google.co.uk ( m.google.co.uk )– 4.5 stars
Awesome experience, perhaps the buttons at the top of the page could be a bit more spread out for better use- however really wonderful use of technology to give location based services, auto suggest and other useful mobile features.
2. facebook.com- mobile page: x.facebook.com –3 stars.
Not a bad experience however lacks a lot of the basic functionality that should be there- such as better event support. There are also a lot of errors with the messaging that mean that your 4 line message to your long lost buddy may be deleted in ajax reload- overall needs more work.
3. Youtube.com – not rated as its an android app!
4. Yahoo.com- (mobile.yahoo.com) –4 stars
I was quite surprised by yahoo as they have a wonderful site especially designed for mobiles- but they don’t redirect you there from their homepage! 
Customizable and intuitive- My advise is to put it in your bookmarks- its superb!
5. bbc.co.uk- (www.bbc.co.uk/mobile) – 5 stars
As with most things digital, the bbc have done it right. Customizable, redirectable, looks goodable and very usable(plus any other ables I can think of). This is going to be one of my favourite sites and probably worth its own direct review.
6. Windows Live (Bing) – m.bing.com –2.5 stars
I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the page, it looks like something I would have experienced in the good old wap days. Not finger friendly and very unimaginative- plus no way to get back to the main site without retyping URL. Microsoft needs to drastically step up their game.
And the rest.
There are still a few highlights to go such as Wikipedia’s mobile site and twitter’s great mobile page( which crazily also isn’t automatically redirected to!)- however there is so much here I will do a follow on blog post for some more of the popular sites. One interesting omission is Google’s very on blogger.com which was the only site in the top 20 to lack a mobile template- could this mean that a blogger app is on its way? or perhaps Google doesn’t want people mobiblogging from their website
Clearly the major sites have put the money into creating a mobile experience that Android users can take advantage of. Some websites like Yahoo and BBC have gone that extra step to customize am improve the experience which should pay dividends in the short term. Some sites like blogger and bing.com still have a lot of catchup work to do.
We are at the dawn of a new browser war and so far webkit is winning- all the popular sites are starting to make it easy for mobile users to browse and the other smaller sites will no doubt follow suit.
Like I have said before- its got a whole lot more interesting- its anyone’s guess how this will play out however what is clear is that on the browser front- firefox mobile , opera mobile and internet explorer mobile should start bringing their guns to the fight before webkit rules the mobile web.
I hope you found this survey informative- please let me know which are your favourite sites that you visit from your phone and how you find the experience. Please feel free to email me via my contact page or post comments if you agree or disagree or want to share any other comments.
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