The fact that neither Qualcomm nor Opera are top-of-mind names for American consumers are part of what make this announcement very special. Qualcomm makes the chipsets that power most of the low-to-medium end cell phones in the United States. We used to call them "dumbphones" but the better term today is "feature phones." Most of us in the press have been so overwhelmed by the iPhone and kin that we have paid scant attention to the type of phone used by 83% of mobile owners. Qualcomm chips power cell phones for the masses.
The developing technology inside these feature phones now gives them the ability to do much more than handled voice calls and text messages. Games, calendars and various calculators were first up, but now Qualcomm wants to provide simple Web access to the folks who wouldn't dream of buy an iPhone or Blackberry.
It is unlikely that the Brew operating system will bump out the iPhone OS or Android, but its potential is enormous. AT&T says it will use Brew for its feature phones, joining Verizon, Sprint and U.S. Cellular. With the simple Opera browser pre-installed, the phones will be able to tap into the Internet for information and use special apps. This could bring Web access to the mass of American mobile users who do not own a smartphone. The sticking point remains the data service contracts. However, both AT&T have introduced no-contract, pay-by-the-month data plans, which could bring the price down to an attractive level for timeclock-punching Americans.
If that happens, the breakneck race to mobile dominance of Web browsing could come to the finish line even sooner than the three years predicted by Gartner recently. I may have to update my timeline for newspapers.
The move could also have significant social impact. If ubiquitous mobile browsing extends way beyond the educated and affluent who now use smartphones, the content of popular Mobile Web sites will likely change to accommodate the broader audience. Considering that the percentage of Americans with mobile phones far exceeds that of Americans who read newspapers, this means that editors will do a little soul searching about their coverage. If not, someone else will happily step in.
Remember Benjamin Day and the Penny Press?
Comments
Except those Android phones
Except those Android phones and BlackBerries mostly use a more capable version of the Qualcomm MSM/QSD chip. The user experience in the new Opera Mini/Mobile browsers are just phenomenal, with multiple pages that can be switched to by tapping or pressing a button showing a thumbnail of the pages, or new pages can be pulled quickly from bookmarks also with a thumbnail of the pages. The problem, as pointed out, will be data plans. Opera Mini uses a remotely rendered/proxied version of a web page intended to reduce bandwidth requirements. Opera Mobile is a full Opera browser in a mobile form factor and mostly shares UI with Opera Mini.
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