Mobile Safari without the iPhone

By Aaron Gustafson | September 10th, 2007 | Filed in Browsers, Mobile

Apple has brought Mobile Safari to the iPod.

Last week, Apple announced the new iPod Touch (essentially, an iPhone without the phone bits). What’s particularly interesting about the iPod Touch is that it includes WiFi connectivity and Mobile Safari.

There are two aspects to this release that make it particularly interesting:

Mobile Safari is now poised to explode in terms of market share, possibly driving a lot of innovation in the handheld browser market, and
developers now have a far less expensive means of obtaining and testing on the new browser.

What do you think of this announcement? What repercussions do you think we’ll see?

Your Replies

#1 On September 10th, 2007 8:03 pm Danny Cohen replied:

Repercussions? A lot more running into street lamps.

I think it may create a somewhat standard of what to expect the full internet (not WAP) to be on a mobile device. Just as the iTunes Store has dictated that a song is worth $.99, the internet should be a certain window size and also know that the input device may not be one that hovers, just clicks.

#2 On September 10th, 2007 9:32 pm Matt Robin replied:

The announcement itself hasn’t sparked much enthusiasm because, as you have already stated: the iPod Touch is an iPhone without the bits – although there is certainly nothing wrong with that at all! Excellent piece of kit! So, will it be another case of ‘made for [insert Apple Mac portable device name here]‘ at the risk of not being made suitable for other Mobile browsers too.
As great as the iPhone and iPod Touch are – they are only two products in a market filled with devices that won’t be using Safari!

Mobile Safari is poised to explode in terms of ‘Apple Mac’ portable device market share…and not automatically guaranteed of broader success on other, rival handheld products.

Unfortunately, this means repercussions will be minimal in long-term.
No, what will really open things up for Mobile Safari is if more devices, launched from other companies (that could even rival iPhone and iPod Touch), can run Mobile Safari too…it preferred.

This lack of choice for mobile browser among the various devices is an odd situation…
I mean, if you buy a Mac or PC right now – you’re not forced to have only one choice of web browser…so why should mobile devices be any different?

Sure, Mobile Safari will have the jump on other potential browsers in terms of development …but this only seems to be based on the sales of the iPhone and iPod Touch – what happens when (theoretically) Sony launch a similarly competitive device and the featured browser of choice is ‘not’ Mobile Safari, but something else (Like Opera)?

Mobile Safari is announced for the iPod Touch…..yeah, that’s not substantial enough news for Apple, the Mobile Safari browser, or even for Web Developers at large. Let’s see what everyone else does in the near future before claiming that Mobile Safari will ‘explode’ in terms of market share!

#3 On September 11th, 2007 6:44 am Alice Pretchet » Mobile Safari without the IPhone via WaSP replied:

[...] Mobile Safari without the IPhone [...]

#4 On September 11th, 2007 7:29 am Gareth Rushgrove replied:

Personally I see it as a long term game. At the moment the number of iPod Touch’s around won’t be that significant but what about when all iPods come with a browser and wide area wi-fi comes into play? Then it might get interesting.

Having said that, if Opera makes more deals to get their browser onto phones as the default their market share will sky rocket from an already dominant (in terms of the fragmented mobile browser market, and according to some sources) position.

#5 On September 11th, 2007 8:36 am maxCohen replied:

I see it as a no brainer. It’s pathetic that it’s taken this long for any hardware company to come out with such an item. (I remembering posting years ago on 37Signals that there should be in cellphone and iPod put together and people trashing me how stupid that was.) I’ve been dreaming for such an item for years but it’s still missing one thing I want and that’s built-in GPS. Come on, how difficult can it be for these ‘geniuses’.

#6 On September 11th, 2007 10:00 am Patrick replied:

Movie Flat,
What on earth are you talking about? Safari webkit has now been deployed on Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPod Touch. Webkit has also been deployed in a range of Nokia phones that also support rich HTML browsing.

Webkit is also the rendering engine for iTunes and OS X Mail. (Safari is just the chrome that runs the webkit rendering engine)

Safari is on more platforms that most browsers right now, with the exception of Opera. I suppose you won’t be “surprised” until it shows up in a toaster.

And hacker friendly? Please. Compared to IE, Safari is a fortress.

#7 On September 11th, 2007 8:20 pm WaSP Member agustafson replied:

what happens when (theoretically) Sony launch a similarly competitive device and the featured browser of choice is ‘not’ Mobile Safari, but something else (Like Opera)?

Well, Sony already does have a mobile browser on the PSP (based on NetFront) and the Nintendo DS offers browsing via a specially-configured version of Opera. These happened prior to the launch of Mobile Safari on the iPhone and its subsequent release in the iPod Touch. The sad truth is, however, that neither of those browsers made a significant impact on the market (though I do know several universities that see the PSP show up in their usage logs with relative frequency). Furthermore, neither the PSP nor the DS has the numbers that Apple does with the iPod.

As Gareth points out, assuming Apple continues to move in the direction it seems to be going, it probably won’t be long before touchscreens and Mobile Safari find their onto all iPods (with the exception of the Shuffle, of course). The last few years has seen huge growth in iPod sales, so it’s not hard to imagine that if that trend continues (and as more people upgrade or replace their current iPod models), Mobile Safari will quickly become a major player in the handheld internet appliance market.

I’m not saying it’s a good or a bad thing, I just think it is a distinct possibility. Sure, the number of iPods currently in use is dwarfed by the number of mobiles (and Opera is strengthening its position in that particular market), but I don’t think it will be long before Mobile Safari is right up there with Opera as one of the more dominant browsers in the handheld space.

#8 On September 11th, 2007 10:05 pm Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves replied:

My take is that if Safari does grab a huge market share, it will hurt video and audio interoperability in the web, as Apple has no interest to support the HTML 5 spec baseline codecs, instead willing to push in (ala Microsoft) the massively patented MPEG-4 of which Apple owns one patent. That, isn’t good news.

I find it interesting that WaSP does not care to talk about Opera and Firefox on cellphones. Have you seen N800? What about Nintendo DS? What about the SmartPhones using Linux and other free software? Guess what: they have browsers too! What’s all this noise about the iPhone? It’s not even a good product.

#9 On September 12th, 2007 12:30 am Olaf replied:

What can give it more beautiful for Apple, as if programs are produced at one time, because of which then people the iPhone (or iPod touch) buys, without Apple responsibility and work (in form of the care of a SDKs) must take over?

#10 On September 14th, 2007 4:51 pm Jonatan replied:

Well, so far “Safari mini” can only be used with iPhone and iPod touch. Meanwhile, here’s some other browsers for mobile devices:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/
http://www.operamini.com/

:-)

#11 On September 16th, 2007 3:26 am TomkOx replied:

If you have to buy a product (browser on a device or browser with os) just to tests only, then you are not on the real standards idea. This is a reason, why I have not – and do not use – PC with Windows and IE… Becouse – why I have to buy them? For tests? Isn’t this suckable…?. This is like making html soup tag on wysiwyg and shareware sh*ts with thinking that xhtml turbo 7.0 is so beautiful, modern and functional (and – now – html 4.01 is not)… :)

Internet Explorer is not a web browser

#12 On September 17th, 2007 10:48 am passivhaus bauen replied:

Here in germany the iphone is still not released and Apple said it wont have UMTS capabilities at the beginning – may be the model in the next year. So I will still use my subnotebook and WLAN (Wifi). That is fast and works :-)

#13 On September 22nd, 2007 6:48 pm Damen replied:

I’ve just had a sudden realisation. if the Pod touch has all this functionality built in, is it feasible to use the touch as a VOIP phone… just realised no mic is there! Dammit thought I saw an opening for an iPhone without the O2 contract there!

#14 On September 23rd, 2007 10:36 am Miomio replied:

I still thing that one of the best mobile browser is the Nokia browser. It is also built on Safari (I think so).

#15 On September 25th, 2007 6:09 pm Andrew Evans replied:

Yeah, the S80 browser (used in Nokia handsets) is based on Webkit an open source HTML rendering engine used in Safari (also used in Adobe AIR).

See:-

http://www.s60.com
http://webkit.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/

#16 On October 1st, 2007 4:06 am All Night Coder - Today’s Top Blog Posts on Programming - Powered by SocialRank replied:

[...] Mobile Safari without the iPhone [...]

#17 On October 12th, 2007 6:11 am Marcel Thomas replied:

I think this technology opened new markets! The Iphone is Hot! But in germany come the IPhone in 2008. I’m waiting strained an post my experiences next Year.

#18 On November 5th, 2007 7:49 am Vectorpedia replied:

The Mobile Safari will open the marketplace as an alternative to Microsoft………its great to have competition

#19 On November 12th, 2007 9:52 am Lampen replied:

Sure, Mobile Safari will have the jump on other potential browsers in terms of development …but this only seems to be based on the sales of the iPhone and iPod Touch – what happens when (theoretically) Sony launch a similarly competitive device and the featured browser of choice is ‘not’ Mobile Safari, but something else (Like Opera)?

#20 On November 12th, 2007 9:54 am Toner replied:

#21 On November 19th, 2007 11:33 am kL replied:

I think the explosion is in mindshare, but not market share.

Safari still has tiny marketshare compared to Opera Mini. There’s magnitude more hardware out there that can run Opera Mini than Safari (MP3 players market is smaller than mobiles market, iPhone is trying to grab 1% of mobiles market).

And I think hype about Safari is hurting mobile web. I keep seeing more and more “iPhone-only” pages popping up, created by people who actually believe that iPhone has the first and the only “real” web browser on mobile device, completly ignoring Opera and S60.

Apple is encouraging iPhone specific tags and hacks and they even define size of iPhone’s UI elements in pixels, so sites can create (fragile!) pixel-pefect layouts for Safari only.

#22 On November 23rd, 2007 1:24 pm Vectorpedia replied:

Perhaps the most confusing element is the iPod Touch’s wireless feature. Obviously aimed at selling iTunes content, WiFi incidentally provides Web access via a special version of Safari and a YouTube application, but email is conspicuously absent.

#23 On November 23rd, 2007 2:40 pm WaSP Member faruk replied:

kL:

How do you know that Safari has a tiny market share compared to Opera Mini? Just because Opera Mini / Mobile are available on a much larger number of phones does not mean they are actually USED on those phones, but Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch is almost guaranteed to be used at least once by the owner, but far more likely, used regularly.

If I had to go by my own stats on browsers (not from my own site but from a large collection of seriously high-profile sites), Safari has far, far bigger market share than Opera, when it comes to mobile phone usage. Would love to see the basis of your claims, if there is any.

#24 On November 26th, 2007 1:03 pm Alexander Mannewitz replied:

I also tried browsing via iPhone, and discovered that some websites looking very poor.Safari is not an optimum for mobile phone browser.
Surely, there are alternative Mobile Browser, but well coded websites look always nice on the iPhone in that matter.

Conclusion: Safari on iPhone is not the best decisions, but if you near to Accessibility – your website will look in a proper way.

Additional:
Some Exploits were explored by different institutions so far, sure Apple fixed the security vulnerabilities. But,that fact lleft a bitter taste.

#25 On November 29th, 2007 2:51 am David replied:

iPhone doesn’t support Flash – for me this is a great weakness. How about Ajax and Javascript? Can we be reasonably certain that if a site functions properly in Safari, it should work pretty well in the iPhone?

#26 On November 29th, 2007 5:48 am SEO Company replied:

Well i “think” from memory david, that the iphone delivers pages in a different manner.

Please someone correct me if I am wrong but it is essentially a screenshot that you are being shown, so the page is not actually processed by your phone, but a screenshot of it is.

#27 On December 4th, 2007 12:37 pm Hörmann replied:

Mobile Safari is now poised to explode in terms of market share, possibly driving a lot of innovation in the handheld browser market, and developers now have a far less expensive means of obtaining and testing on the new browser.

#28 On December 6th, 2007 8:43 am Tagbox replied:

In my opinion iPhone is too small to enjoy the web completely. It´s good for checking mail or information. But I´d never swap to iPhone or another mobile web device at all.

Return to top

Post a Reply

Comments are closed.

Working together for standards The Web Standards Project