Linkbait 18

This week’s. Or rather, this month’s.

• Huge news: HP is in talks to license webOS. Samsung is reportedly interested.
  Samsung is looking for a replacement for Android. Google should be very worried about this.
• Very useful post: why WebKit does not equal WebKit. I’ve proved beyond doubt that there is no WebKit on mobile, but why is that the case? This article provides insight.
• Interesting data on mobile network usage. Turns out that the biggest problem for mobile networks is that TCP isn’t ready for it. If a client does not indicate it has received TCP packages, TCP reacts by slowing down. That’s the right thing to do on a wired connection, but completely wrong on mobile wireless connections.
• Great discussion about what I call HTML5 apps. Bruce Lawson calls for one packaging standard, and he’s right. Currently everyone who implements downloadable and installable web apps has its own packaging system. They resemble each other very much, which makes one wonder why everybody has to invent their own. Time for a convergence.
• The results of the 2010 ALA survey have been released. No really shocking findings; more-or-less the same as 2009. Still, this builds up our data set even further.
• The screen resolution is not equal to the browser window resolution. That’s obvious to me and you, but apparently not to all. Better still, this article gives a good comparison of screen and browser window resolutions, and 61% of all users give their browser window a width of between 100 and 200 pixels narrower than the screen width.
• Last week Dutch parliament adopted a net neutrality law (Guardian; Ars Technica; provisions translated into English), not least thanks to the tireless lobbying of Bits of Freedom. Mobile operators are not allowed to perform Deep Package Inspection in order to determine whether a user uses, say Skype or WhatsApp — services that directly compete with the operators. They’re not allowed to charge extra for use of these services, either.
  Although this is great in principle, I cannot help but worry a bit about video on mobile connections. It constitutes 48% of all traffic, even though it’s not all that important for users in the mobile media mix. So operators should have some sort of way to charge extra for video use, in my opinion. Consumers must start to understand that some kinds of data consumption cost money.
• Michael Mace discusses mobile data (part 1, part 2, part 3). Required reading.
  It’s this kind of problems that aren’t addressed at all by net neutrality, laudable though the principle might be.
• Financial Times goes web apps instead of native — carefully.

  But, one by one, we found that all the things that could be done in a native app actually could be done in a HTML5 app - and we haven’t had to compromise on anything, though we were expecting to.

  Interesting.
• More information on Huawei, the fast-growing device vendor from China.
• Some S40 news: Qt is going there, as is Nokia Maps and a new browser (Ovi). Lest it be forgotten in all the smartphone Symbian/Windows Phone/MeeGo hubbub; S40 is a very succesful OS and already in the hands of maybe a billion people. Nokia wants to serve them, and it seems that not only the strategy is correct (as is usually the case with Nokia), but also the execution (which is compararively rare).
• Endgadget sums up the confusion that was caused by Nokia’s release of the (reportedly excellent) MeeGo-based N9. If MeeGo can compete with iOS, why does Nokia switch to Windows Phone? Or will it reconsider now that so much praise is heaped on the N9?
• The Nokisoft Windows Phone will initially be launched in the Netherlands, France, Germany, UK, Spain and Italy. That’s weird for an OS that was supposed to conquer the US market for Nokia.
  Nokia used to have a good strategy and a lousy execution. Now it seems they’ve set this state of affairs to right by also having a lousy strategy. Except in the low-end market, where S40 still rulez.
• Samsung implements the W3C Contacts API in WebKit. Not quite ready for prime time yet, but it’s a huge step forward.
• Microsoft’s still in the woods with Windows Phone 7. The Mango update, which is supposed to contain IE9, is being rolled out, but at phone retail stores customers are steered away from Phone 7 and towards iOS and Android. You can update all you want, but if you don’t sell devices it’s not going to help you.
  According to Tomi the reason is Skype. Operators hate Skype with a passion, and now that Microsoft wants to integrate it into Phone 7, operators are going to ignore the OS as much as they can. And since it’s the operators that call the shots subsidy-wise, they can ignore it quite a bit.
• Some more details on Windows 8: seems HTML/CSS/JavaScript will become first-class citizens: it will be possible to run web apps.

  they'll gain greater access to operating system functionality than regular webpages — so they'll be able to call Windows APIs and have a user interface that feels less like a webpage, more like a native application. Feature-wise, they should be at the same level as .NET and native programs. It's just that they'll use an HTML5 programming model and JavaScript. The net result should be something that's familiar to Web developers, but without the functional deficits that Web applications normally suffer.

  Wouldn’t that be something?
• Mass media are under pressure in the US. A growing share of people just doesn’t have enough money to participate in them.

  The country's top quintile has carved out so much for itself that the bottom two can no longer pay their way. And what we've come to know as mass media may soon be no more.

  This will doubtless have influence on smartphone sales figures, too.
• Summary of TouchPad reviews: not good. Seems to be unresponsive and crash-prone.
  I used a TouchPad for about 15 minutes three months ago, and the software was clearly in early beta. I had assumed HP would solve the problems, especially since they were the only company not to rush their tablet but to take their time. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have helped them.
• Japan is supposed to be the most advanced mobile market in the world. So I’m glad for the Japanese that they can now send SMSs to people who’re on a different network.
  Yes. Apparently, in the most advanced mobile market in the world it wasn’t as yet possible to send an SMS if the receiver happened to have a contract with a different operator. So much for advances, I suppose.
• Horace Dediu does the math: Apple can buy the entire mobile industry with the exception of Samsung.
  Still, I don’t think Apple will actually do that. A juicy operator, sure, why not? (Make it a worldwide one, and not one of those weird domestic US ones, mkay?) But all of the mobile industry? I mean, they’d have to make Symbian phones. And Windows phones. And all the rest of the stuff they proved was outdated.
• An ex-RIM employee tells stories: leadership is bad, but RIM as a whole is still healthy when it comes to people. RIM isn’t dead, it’s just ailing.
• Jason Grigsby thinks that the iPod Touch is going to disappear because Apple will release an iPhone Nano. Not sure about the iPod, but as I said I firmly believe in the Nano.
• I think Horace Dediu is thinking the same thing, although he’s extremely careful not to come right out and say so. Instead, he points at pre-paid vs. post-paid and that Apple doesn’t have any reach in the former, and the fact that Apple’s never done real deals with operators, as all other device vendors have.
• And Vision Mobile takes a good look at the role of cross-platform tools in the mobile web. Conclusion: it’s not either Web or Native, it depends. This is already common in the web development world, but the mobile world is still in the throes of either-or thinking.
  Most of the articles it links to are well worth reading, too.
• Have a tip for next week?

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