In brief:

It’s encouraging to see a much sharper focus on mobile search and a growing realization among mobile operators, content providers and publishers/developers that there is a lot more to mobile search than the universal model we know from the online Internet. Mobile phone form factors push companies to develop new mobile search services that deliver us relevant results in tune with our intent and context. All the better if these services make use of features and functions such as voice recognition, image recognition, location-awareness and Augmented Reality.

Another development that makes search essential is the avalanche of apps and app stores, and the drive by all the players in the ecosystem to make these content and services storefronts a commercial success. Case in point: Apple’s decision to snap up Siri, a voice-activated digital personal assist that takes the concept of search to a new level (allowing us to find not search!)

OPEN CALL FOR MOBILE SEARCH FIRMS

Regular readers will recall that I have tracked mobile search from the start (hence, the name MSearchGroove, following on the popularity of my industry-first report on the mobile search and content discovery space).

My background and passion also allow me to connect with cool companies in the space such as Taptu, the first mobile search company to index the Mobile Touch Web; Expertmaker, a mobile search company in stealth mode that allows us to refine our search parameters in real-time; GetFugu, a company that combines search and image recognition to help people find local businesses and navigate to their website; and Aisle 411, a company at the sweet spot between mobile search and inventory management. (Check out the bnetTV video interviews I conducted with Carl Freer, GetFugu founder, and Nathan Pettyjohn, Aisle 411 Chairman & CEO.)

I look forward to including these and more cool companies in my keynote presentation to the European Commission. The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, which is part of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, has organized an exploratory expert workshop titled “Exploring the Future of Mobile Search” to discuss the innovation potential in mobile search. The workshop will take place in Ghent, Belgium (June 9), during the 9th Conference of Telecommunication, Media and Internet Techno-Economics.

Timed to this event I will also kick off a new series on MSG profiling mobile search newcomers and innovators. If you are a mobile search company and want to be included in my ongoing work and upcoming series, then please contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com).

DATA POINTS

With search at the top of the business agenda, the timing is excellent to recount the key takeaways of several recent mobile search reports.

MOBILE COMMERCE & MOBILE SEARCH: Mobile Commerce (MC) – which handles over 25 percent of the searches coming from U.K. mobile operator portals and other sources – recently released a report summarizing the trends it observes based on the search queries it “sees” per year.

Among the findings:

• The volume of searches has more than doubled over the last 12 months. MC reports an increase in mobile search usage from 125 million queries to 250 million, in part due to the jump in the number of people signing up for flat-rate data bundles to surf the mobile Web. The number of searches per unique user also shows an increase. The total has grown from 8 per month to 13. (Granted this is not the frequency of use we know from the online Internet, but it is an indication that users are gravitating to the search box on portals as they become more familiar with the mobile Web.)
• The position of the search box is critical. MC’s data confirms that the higher the search box is placed on the portal, the more people use it. It’s not rocket science, but it does show that there are very simple ways to significantly increase the use of search. Even stating that search is free of charge (as Orange has done on its Orange World Portal) can boost usage.
• Tag clouds are useful shortcuts. Many use search instead of bookmarks to reach sites and destinations quickly (which is why Facebook was the single most searched term of 2009). MC tells us that displaying tag clouds containing the most popular search terms is another way to increase searches and drive results.
• Date, time and current events drive searches. No surprise here – but you can follow Steve Page, MC founder, who shares the top search terms and trends via his Twitter feed (@sjspage).
• Internet destinations and giants (Google, Facebook, YouTube) are top search terms. In addition to this information and analysis (summarized in this earlier post on MSG) MC shares how subjects are searched, reminding advertisers that they must bid on many related terms and tag their mobile pages correctly to ensure their results are high up in the natural search results for the terms.
• Are local terms also local searches? Google may have recently claimed that 33 percent of all searches on mobile have a local context, but MC is less convinced. It shows that searches such as “Manchester” are more about local soccer teams (Manchester United) than the city. Of all location searches, 55 percent include either a city or area name, 17 percent have a point-of-interest, 15 percent use a full zip code and 13 percent have a partial zip code.
• Search shortcomings can be avoided. Transcoding is not the only way to mobilize sites. Advertisers should build versions optimized for device types. (Taptu indexes sites that are touch-friendly and built from the ground up for access via touchscreen devices, for example.) The intelligence behind the search boxes could also be better. MC’s road test of search on Nokia Ovi reveals that it delivers games results for pac man – but not for pacman. Android Market suffers the “same shortcoming.” (BTW: This could be solved with a simple “Did You Mean” response to clarify the search term and the searcher’s intent.)

Source

The bottom line: MC has brought together a lot of insights about what people search for and how they search for it. Mobile search isn’t perfect, but volumes are increasing, and so is the pressure on providers to deliver a better experience. And it’s not just about mobile operators any more. The rise of the app stores means publishers and the 75 app stores are well-advised to develop mobile search strategies to deliver people the apps they want – or at least relevant results.

* * *
ARE APPS BEATING SEARCH?: This insightful post from GigaOM draws from a Broadpoint AmTech note and asks if apps are poised to disrupt the standard online search model. The Broadpoint report says search engines derive significant revenues from commerce-related queries (searching for “Amazon” or “eBay”) and suggests that warns that the growth in the usage of mobile apps that take people directly to destinations could be bad news for Google & Co. “If users get in the habit of simply using the Amazon app to search for products or a Fandango app for movies, then Google would be seriously impacted,” the report concludes.

Source

The bottom line: Mobile apps cover the bases to bypass search engines when the purpose of the search is navigational (using the search box as a shortcut) and commercial (looking for a product on Amazon by searching for Amazon first, for example). Sebastian Rupley, who wrote the post, reminds us that Google can likely read the writing on the wall, which is why the search giant is so interested in the “spread of Android-based phones, many of which emphasize its tools and applications, and steer users into its search/ad ecosystem.” It will be interesting to see how all search engines react to the onslaught of mobile apps that make finding and buying stuff with our phones a no-brainer.

* * *

FACEBOOK DOMINATES: We all know that social networking is the number one activity on mobile. A recent ComScore report reveals that search queries on the social networking site (online) grew by a whopping 48 percent between February and March 2010. In its study, which is based on 15.4 billion core searches in the U.S., ComScore also found Google leads with 65.1 percent of the market, down 0.4 percent from February. It was followed by Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask and AOL. Microsoft showed a 7 percent increase after adding mapping and other features.

Source

The bottom line: Read between the lines and this bodes well for social sites and social search via mobile. Facebook, which has more than 400 million active users, is exploding when it comes to search (up 48 percent) on the Internet. Only a matter of time before this trend spreads to mobile, our preferred way to connect with our social networks and information about people who matter most to us on the fly. Meantime, Tech Crunch points out that search growth is slowing. The post concludes: the slowdown “may also be an indication that the search industry is maturing, and the next leg of growth may not kick in until people start searching on their mobile phones in a significant way or something else gives people a reason to search even more than they already do.”

* * *

TAPTU TOUCH WEB REPORTS: This week Taptu releases the fourth in its series of reports analyzing the Mobile Touch Web. To make sure we are all on the same page and to set the stage for the next report findings, here’s a summary of the key takeaways.

• The January Report defined the Touch Web (and the ecosystem emerging around it) and concluded that the Mobile Touch Web had arrived full force. According to the company, which indexes touch-friendly sites and destinations, there were around 326,000 touch-friendly sites in January compared with a total of 180,000 apps across all app stores.
• The February Report takes this a step further, offering a breakdown of the sites that make up the Mobile Touch Web. The report emphasized shopping and services, a major subset of this new Web. In total Taptu counts approx. 83,000 Mobile Touch websites devoted to shopping and services. Why is this significant? Shopping and services accounts for about 26 percent of all sites. The same category accounts for less than 4 percent of apps in app stores. Taptu concludes that commerce is a chief focus on the Mobile Touch Web and will play an important role in its evolution.
• The March Report takes an in-depth look at the Government and Non-Profit sector and its growing presence on the Touch Web. The report highlights some of the leading services from Education institutions such as MIT, the Haiti disaster relief effort from the Charity sector and various local and federal government agencies that are using the Touch Web to reach a mass audience. A surprise: a large number of religious organizations embracing the Mobile Touch Web (a whopping 72 percent of all sites in the Government & Non-Profit segment are faith-based services).

Source: You can download all Taptu reports here: http://taptu.com/metrics/

* * *

AUSTRALIA STATS: This post draws from new Nielsen research to provide numbers on mobile search usage in Australia.

• 73 percent of mobile Internet users conduct searches, compared to 38 percent accessing email and 14 percent checking social media sites
• The figure (73 percent) of people using mobile search was just 30 percent a year ago
• 43 percent of total Australian mobile phone owners have Internet-enabled handsets, though just 29 percent use their mobiles to access the Internet
• Search came out on top of activities conducted on mobile Internet; checking the news and weather, emails, maps and directories, and social networking were also cited as common mobile activities

The report also includes some insights into mobile social networking and the top handsets.

Source

The bottom line: Great to have country-specific stats. Although mobile Internet usage has a way to go, there is a tendency among users to use mobile search to explore all the exciting content at their finger tips. Makes sense that we start off by transferring our online experience to mobile.

Disclaimer: Taptu is an MSG supporter and client.

While the iPhone OS was the leading smartphone platform on Millenial’s network, with 33 percent of smartphone share (ahead of BlackBerry’s 31 percent), Samsung was the top device maker, thanks to the predominance of featurephones. The company also said the US mobile web audience grew to 64.8 million users, and that its ad network reached nearly 80 percent of them.

The report also features a section on mobile app analytics, provided by Mobclix, which says that the iPhone App Store is the biggest on the block, with 115,000 apps, and also leads in downloads, with 100 million per month. Android Market is a distant second, with 20 million per month, and BlackBerry App World even further back in third, delivering 300,000 downloads per month.

Millienial adds that traffic to advertisers’ sites represented almost half of the mobile campaign destinations on its network in October, while app downloads accounted for about 30 percent. Source

The bottom line: Mobile web use – and the market for mobile ads – continues to grow. But don’t overlook smartphones, which still account for a huge chunk of the mobile web market.

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THE MOTOROLA DROID SOLD 250,000 UNITS IN ITS FIRST WEEK, according to GigaOM and based on a report from mobile analytics company Flurry. The new Android device, available only on Verizon Wireless in the US, has been well received by commentators, and now, apparently, by the market as well. Flurry says that the sales are more than four times those of T-Mobile’s MyTouch 3G in its first week of sales in August, but of course pale in comparison to the 1.6 million iPhone 3GS devices sold in its first week. Source

The bottom line: Is Motorola clawing its way back from the precipice? Could be – since software has long been its Achilles heel, turning to Android could turn out to be a smart choice, and one that saves the company.

—–

MORE THAN 3 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE UK HAVE REDEEMED A MOBILE COUPON, says Juniper Research in a new report. The analyst firm says that mobile coupons enjoy a redemption rate six times higher than traditional paper coupons, again highlighting the viability of mobile marketing to deliver results for advertisers and brands. Source

The bottom line: Mobile coupons seem like a no-brainer, if only because people are less likely to forget to bring their phone to a shop than a paper coupon! But combined with opt-in campaigns and any number of targeting techniques, they represent a valuable resource for retailers.

—–

THE NUMBER OF MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING USERS IN LATIN AMERICA AND AFRICA WILL INCREASE TENFOLD BY 2015, says a new report from analyst firm Frost & Sullivan and mobile social networking provider Colibria. F&S says the market will amount to 527 million users and be worth $2.4 billion in six years, reflecting the increased popularity of the services, but also the prevalence of mobile as an Internet channel in emerging markets. Source

The bottom line: It’s easy to predict the growth of mobile social networks, but anybody eyeing the space has to keep in mind how people in emerging markets use their mobiles and access the internet primarily through them.

It was great to have the last few days off and even better to map out an exciting line-up of MSearchGroove projects for the next few months. One that I am particularly honored to announce: my collaboration with GigaOM Pro, the new research arm of the highly respected tech blog GigaOM. By way of background, GigaOM Pro has brought together an impressive roster of industry authorities and analysts (including my esteemed colleague Chetan Sharma) to “address the gap that exists in real-time expert industry analysis on emerging technology markets.” The GigaOM Pro solution: Make timely, highly relevant analysis and insights accessible and practical.

I’m on board to write an in-depth examination of personalization and recommendation technologies and business models, a natural next step given my long track record analyzing mobile search and my deep involvement in the recommender space. (This includes work with Strands, a major provider of recommender systems, on recommender industry events including RecSys 09 – October 22-25, NYC.)

The report is an ambitious undertaking and I am naturally interested in connecting with personalization/recommendation companies –so please contact me directly if you wish to be considered for inclusion. peggy@msearchgroove.com

Why the buzz about personalization?

The advance of Internet-specific smartphones and the spread of app store schemes turns up the pressure on mobile operators (and their content providers) to decipher data transactions (on and off the network), combine it with location and demographic data and use the results to create a 360-degree view of the individual.

Where does this shift leave mobile operators?

They are hard pushed to turn analytics into competitive advantage. Sensing this business opportunity (that execs tell me they estimate hovers in the hundreds of millions of dollars), a slew of companies (such as Amdocs, Bytemobile, Novarra and Qualcomm) are among the first out the gates with revamped offers to arm operators for the ultimate battle with Web giants for the mobile customer. This special series profiles the players jockeying for position in the marketplace.

This week we look at Openwave, which has recently productized its existing analytics capabilities and business intelligence know-how, and packaged it up as Mobile Analytics.

The solution – designed to aggregate usage data and behavioral information across a variety of sources, including on-portal surfing and open Web browsing, to generate meaningful reports –dovetails with other Openwave offers (behavioral targeting, profiling, usage pattern analysis) to lay the groundwork for the delivery of relevant content and advertising.

I caught up with Mayur Pitamber, Openwave Product Management Strategist, to discuss the role of the mobile operator, debate the value of personalization and what we can expect next in the Openwave product roadmap.

AN EXCERPT OF OUR Q&A

Q: Let’s talk about the fit with mobile advertising. You have just launched the complement to your own mobile advertising solution, which is Mobile Analytics. What’s the level of interest in mobile advertising? I’m hearing some operators get it, but many more don’t…

A: There was some hype about it at first, but operators are starting to see the value of it now and they are also beginning to understand the real value of the data they have. The last months have been marked by a surge of activity and RFIs and RFPs specifically for mobile analytics solutions, which is new in this market. We didn’t see this last year.

A lot of what happened and the initial excitement around mobile advertising industry was quite premature. It’s not just about offering targeted advertising; it’s about offering relevant products and services based on the user’s behavior. The operators can use analytics to gain profiles of these users, the sites they frequent and what they do while online. It’s when this information can be aggregated and provided to media agencies and brands that it really becomes valuable.

It’s all about helping operators to provide the mobile audience metrics that the brands are looking for. Not necessarily going through the GSMA, because they have some of that [covered in their] initiative, but doing that directly. With the solution we’re offering the operators can provide those metrics directly to the brands, to the media agencies, to the publishers, and be a vital part of that mobile advertising ecosystem. And with our solution there’s no need for us to insert tracking or cookies or JavaScript, or anything like that. Every Web page goes through our gateway and we can basically track on that. So, that’s a key differentiator.

Q: There are, of course, other solutions in this space. A long list of gateway providers: Qualcomm, Amdocs, Ericsson, Nokia, Bytemobile, Novarra. And the space is getting crowded.

A: Obviously, there are competitors out there.  All gateway providers can provide parts of this sort of solution. However, I haven’t come across a solution [similar to ours] with this [breadth] out there in the market at this point in time. Being a gateway provider for the last 10 years, we’ve been providing this type of reporting to operators. But now we’ve added more features and made it more user-friendly. So, it’s a mature business intelligence product that we’re bringing to the market.

Q: In early August, Telstra announced it had implemented your Mobile Analytics solution. The press release says it’s all about providing Telstra a “dashboard view of intelligent analytics and rich reporting capabilities across its mobile device portfolio.” To start, how many of your operator customers have this solution or perhaps the analytics solutions that preceded this?

A: We have deployed previous versions of this analytic solution to some six tier-1 operators around the world.

Q: Let’s say I’m an operator and I don’t have a solution from Openwave, but I like the analytics.  Can I just have that, or is it a package deal?

A: Previously, the solution was just built around Openwave products. But obviously, we want a bigger market share, so we’ve designed the solution such that it will work with any other gateway, any other vendor of gateway products.

Q: You said before competing on analytics is the way for operators to be “a vital part of the ecosystem.” Can operators really play this central role?

A: That’s a really good question. I think it’s quite difficult to answer as well. The operators have traditionally been sluggish. Their bread and butter has been voice revenues and SMS revenues. To really get them incentivized to offer new services such as mobile advertising, you need a compelling business case. I’ve spoken to dozens of operators around the world. Some of them are in advanced stages of creating any-time mobile advertising organizations. Others have only one or two mobile advertising product managers. For these operators, the business case – for whatever reason – is just not compelling enough for the decision makers to say okay, let’s really invest in this.

Q: This jives with what people told me while I was conducting interviews for Mobile Advertising Research UK. As one executive at a mobile infrastructure company that counts over 300 network operator clients observed: Mobile advertising only becomes interesting for an operator when “the type of revenue they can envisage is around 2 percent of their overall revenue to 5 percent, and with an opportunity to grow to 10 percent of revenue. This is the revenue that will really make them sit up and make it work.” Another figure that stands out: GBP 28.6 million, which is what the IAB reckons was the mobile ad spend in 2008. What’s your take?

A: I can believe the ad spend for the U.K. I think the hold up is the thinking about the role of the mobile operator. We have to be clear about what they can do. In my view, the role of the mobile operator will be to provide incentives for people to use new services so that additional inventory and mediums become available to insert ads. And obviously, once those mediums become available, that becomes attractive to brands and advertisers. But, right now, it’s difficult for operators to manage their inventories. They have SMS inventory, MMS inventory, on-portal, off-portal. All of these are different systems and it’s difficult to provide brands and advertisers a consolidated view of what is available out there. So, it’s when there is a clear view of the different inventories out there and the tools to manage these inventories, and make these inventories available to third-parties such as the brands and media agencies, that I think mobile advertising will really take off.

Q: Are you convinced operators can start acting like media companies? Or are there going to be a lot of carriers that focus on access over audience?

A: The tier-1s I talk with have created organizations to manage mobile advertising. They’ve created sales forces to go out and sell inventory. So, they are already acting as media agencies and helping brands identify which inventory they want to use. But again, these are just the big tier-1 operators.

Q: Advertising is messaging – and loads of it. Or it could borrow from TV and be video-centric? We don’t know. In any case, we have more data usage – both from people surfing with their smartphones and brands that want to reach them. What is the potential impact on the network side of things? What are you seeing?

A: We’re seeing huge increase in data traffic volumes. A data tsunami is going to hit operators within the next 12-24 months. And some operators are quite oblivious to this. So, [with Mobile Analytics] we’re helping the operators to identify trends on the operational front as well. We’re saying ‘Hey, you need to do capacity planning and optimize your networks because this is going to be your traffic in 6 months or 12 months.’

Q: Let’s move to the report on North American mobile Internet trends you issued that may have got lost in the CTIA shuffle. It made some interesting points, and I understand you are about to release another one soon. What were some of the key observations and what were the surprises?

A: That report was basically based on data from one of our customers in North America. Many of the trends we saw confirmed what the market was thinking. For example, everyone is doing social networking on mobile. The top sites, as you could guess, were Facebook and MySpace.

In terms of search, we were able to also track some keywords. Something that was interesting: people – when they wanted to find Google — wouldn’t enter Google on their mobile phone and go to Google. They would actually enter ‘Google’ in a Yahoo search engine. This operator had Yahoo as a search partner. Anyway, that tells us that a lot of search use may be because of usability. It’s easier to type it [a destination] in a search box than to navigate to it on the Web.

Q: Finally – what about app stores? They’re hot. What is the value-add, if any, from analytics?

A: One of the operators we’re working with is in the process of opening an app store. They know that not all users are going to go through the apps. If you figure the iPhone app store has tens of thousands of apps and growing, users would lose patience sifting through all that. This operator wants to analytics specifically on this [operator] app store to identify the top ten apps. But it goes beyond this to include how many times have the apps been downloaded; who has consumed them; and whether the users have shared apps with other people. More importantly, the operator is providing this app store data to the application developers, so they also have insight into how their apps are being used and how many people have downloaded their apps. So, Mobile Analytics can be used to identify the audiences going to these app stores – and that can be used to build the business.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Generally speaking, the value of data is not in the data itself, but in the mashups we create when we combine it with other data stores. Put another way, the way to wring the value out of analytics is to combine it with location and demographics data, which is why Openwave is keen to feature both in its Mobile Analytics solution. Mayur tells me we can expect location in the next months. (Openwave is also gearing up to announce another customer win for its analytics offer in South East Asia.)

Likewise recommendation capabilities are moving up the list to take a center spot in Openwave strategy. As Mayur put it: The next version of Mobile Analytics will come with recommenders “bolted on.” No word yet on what the recommender will allow (delivery of content or advertising – or both?), how it will achieve this (based on item-to-item or user-to user – or both?), or how it will integrate with Openwave’s underlying Integra platform. But read between the lines, and the sharpened focus on recommendation is at least a welcome testament to the timing and importance of my upcoming GigaOM report on the same topic.

Openwave, unlike some of the gateway providers I’ve examined/profiled in this series, is also bullish about mobile search. The company demo points out that Mobile Analytics potentially improves mobile search, allowing operators to deliver relevant results individuals will find useful.

I am reminded at this juncture of a related post I wrote about the potential for operator-centric, operator-powered, operator-controlled mobile search. With the right tools and technology mobile operators can follow our virtual breadcrumb trail to optimize our mobile search (and advertising) experiences, using our actual usage patterns to give us the answers/results we will most likely appreciate.

My take: Personalization is a hot topic but personalized recommendation and search are even hotter. The space is crowding with gateway providers that are using their position in the network to give their operator customers insights into what people are doing on the network (on- and off-portal). The end-game is about helping operators make business decisions based on new subscriber behaviors and trends. Openwave is one of a number of companies in this space – but it has its eye on the prize: drilling down in the data to help operators manage bandwidth allocation, deliver targeted mobile advertising AND fine-tune recommendation and mobile search. What better way for operators to compete against Internet and search engine giants, and potentially win?

Next in the series: We discuss personalization with Novarra.

Or is the hype around mobile browsers distracting us from widgets as the approach to bank on? Certainly the move toward web-based applications and away from native applications makes customized widgets a key component in our personal mobility experiences. (Peggy S. tells me we can look forward to a lively debate on this topic, beginning with a thought-provoking column from her favourite widget guru, Dave Evans, SurfKitchen CTO, so check back regularly.)

Logically, the browser is not likely to control our mobile Web experience (we really may not choose to replicate our Internet experience on mobile devices, which speaks in favor of a new made-for-mobile approach). However, the browser is in a pivotal position to drive our mobile Web experience, and this alone is reason to examine recent commercial solutions and their potential impacts on how we interface and interact with mobile content.

The last weeks have seen some milestones developments that will no doubt impact how we experience the Internet on our phones. There’s the trickle of news about what we can expect from Mozilla; the news that Skyfire has rolled out the beta release of its mobile browser (an excellent review is here); and a mobile browser speed test of Skyfire, Opera 9.5.1 and Safari from Laptop Magazine, to name just a few examples of the attention mobile browsers are getting lately.

And while we’re at it, who said the winner’s circle won’t include a few surprises?

I’m thinking here of Bitstream, a U.S.-based company that introduced one of the first real mobile browsers some six (!) years ago. Because a mobile browser that targeted smartphones was years ahead of the market, Bitstream shifted its strategy to adapt the technology for use on both high-end and mass-market devices.

The result of that effort is ThunderHawk version 3.0, a browser that marks a comeback for Bitstream and a turning point in how we can access, navigate and enjoy Internet content on our mobile phones.

I caught up with Anna Chagnon, Bitstream’s CEO, for a demo of the browser and an in-depth briefing on where it all goes from here.

What does Bitstream have in mind?
In terms of distribution, Bitstream has devoted 2008 corporate funds and personnel to promote its browser technology to mobile operators and OEMs. Anna tells me the company is pursuing a multi-pronged business model, which is smart.

Bitstream has a client/server version of ThunderHawk that can be scaled to all kinds of phones and a server-based “client-less” solution that eases deployment to all of an operators’ handsets, and, Anna tells me, work is under way on a client-only browser for high-end phones. 

While the company is aggressively targeting operators and device manufacturers with ThunderHawk, it is also targeting content companies and enterprise IT departments that want digital content sent to mobile devices. And Bitstream is also considering the option of licensing ThunderHawk as a white-label product. As Anna puts it: “It’s possible that if people approached us from other browsing companies we’d be open to that, and clearly what we want to do is get the technology out in the marketplace.”

What does Bitstream offer?

At its heart, Bitstream is a digital font company, and it drew from this core competency when creating the ThunderHawk browser. In fact, ThunderHawk effectively replaces the fonts used in the original content contained in a Web page with a proprietary font technology that has several positives. It is more readable and scalable on mobile devices, minimizes the scrolling needed to scan content, and eliminates a lot of the heavy lifting in a network that is required to send data streams associated with fonts in the first place. In fact, it substantially cuts the time needed to load pages – period.

So what is Anna’s assessment of the browser market today? “Some of what the iPhone has taught us is that people will browse on phones that have the right experience level, but until the market takes off there will always be questions about how many and how far the technology goes,” she acknowledged to me.

But it is her view that “until you have a full desktop browsing experience, [the market is] not going to go very far, which is why our experience is really the image of the desktop and tools to help users navigate through that on a smaller screen.”

To this end, the ThunderHawk browser offers patented zoom-in and out modes and a split-view screen feature that gives users the ability to simultaneously view a miniaturized display of a full HTML Web page as it would appear on a desktop, as well as a section of highlighted text, in a larger typeface that the user scrolls through for reading. (Opera Mini, to name just one comparison, gives a layout-perspective and the zoom in-zoom out capability, but not the split-screen feature.)

ThunderHawk users can also employ the browser and assorted soft-keys to open links and conduct Web searches and make one-click calls directly to phone numbers on Web pages.

But grabbing a piece of the action in the mobile browser market will hardly be an easy task for Bitstream. Opera, ACCESS and open source solutions, such as Webkit, are likewise jockeying for position in the marketplace. But the pay-off will be worth it. ABI Research reckons this segment of the mobile browser market (which it calls open-Internet browser, or OIB) will skyrocket, with nearly 700 million browsers delivered in 2013, up from 76 million in 2007.

The bottom line:

As in any mobile technology marketplace, vendors that have differentiating solutions as well as a breadth of products can find advantage. Frank Dickson, co-founder and chief research officer at MultiMedia Intelligence, a market research firm, is impressed by the ThunderHawk browser, as I am. But Bitstream might have a better chance at the big leagues if it focuses on helping mobile content companies and application developers exploit its enabling technologies (which Frank describes as ahead-of-their-time and core to Bitstream’s “strategic competitiveness”).

Bitstream should also borrow a page from the way Adobe Systems licenses its products in the online world, and license its technologies for use in creating mobile content too. “That would be the holy grail for them,” Frank suggested. And I couldn’t agree more.