Mobile Browsing to Move Beyond Smartphones

It won’t be too long before most mobile phones won’t have to be “smart” to offer a full Web browsing experience.

A new study by ABI Research says that by 2015 some 3.8 billion, or more than 60 percent of the installed base of mobile handsets worldwide, will include mobile browsers. The research firm estimates only about 30 percent of handsets currently offer a Web browser.

ABI Research analyst Mark Beccue said the advance of mobile browsers is evolving along two different technological paths.

“On one hand, highly sophisticated browsers, which we are calling full Internet browsers, will be found in all smartphones and a growing number of enhanced (or feature) phones. Such devices can host these browsers because they have advanced application processors, expanded memory capacity and adequate screen size and resolution,” Beccue said in the report.

“These full Internet browsers typically require about 64 MB of memory to run,” he added. “A real key to the growth of full Internet browsers in higher-end feature phones is the falling cost of sophisticated applications processors.”

Read the rest at CIO Update.