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Nokia and Apple Plowing Similar Furrows with Browser Techniques and

By: The Online Reporter
Publish Date: February 01, 2007

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Nokia and Apple Plowing Similar Furrows with Browser Techniques and Ajax - iPhone Boosts Ajax and Fluid UIs, But Nokia Will Take Them Mainstream As is often the case with strong marketing machines, Apple's high profile iPhone launch will benefit not just the company itself, but other advocates of similar technologies, whose efforts have not achieved the same limelight to date. In particular, Apple has intensified nascent interest in various technologies that could bring a full Web experience to the mobile device and support new types of services - notably the Ajax development environment, so far supported mainly by Opera, but which is enabled by the Safari browser that underpins the iPhone and various Nokia models; as well as techniques such as widgets that create distinctive and dynamic user interfaces like that featured on the new Apple device. While Ajax has been mainly an enterprise interest, and still has challenges in the mobile world, especially finding an accommodation with the dominant Java models, it has gained some new profile from Apple and Nokia, which has been investing in the technology for some time, is well placed to put it at the heart of its strategy to dominate the mobile Internet platform - an effort that should, logically, bring it closer to its browser co-developer Apple, despite the potential competition between iPhone and some of the Finnish company's N Series products. As for the user interface, this is the key area where the winners and losers in mobile internet will be decided, and we have seen Nokia itself, Qualcomm/Alltel, T-Mobile and the Korean giants all making significant strides, mainly focusing, like the iPhone, on a more fluid and instinctive approach to the small screen internet and Web services. The boost of the Apple publicity should give many of these efforts a kick towards the mainstream. Apple and Ajax It was predictable, given Apple's history, that the iPhone would be a fairly closed environment, but there has still been consternation in some quarters that it will be so tough for mobile developers to create applications for the device - at a time when most phone makers are finally opening up their platforms, and recognizing that developer support is key to a product's success. However, while the iPhone may not support Java or (as yet at least) Flash, its eye- catching identity does revolve around one of the strongest browsers yet seen in the mobile world, and one that is Ajax-enabled, arousing speculation that the product will kick start interest in the browser-based development environment in the mobile world. The Safari browser included in the iPhone supports the new breed of "fluid user interface" that is often associated with Ajax, and Apple's influence - and the inevitable copying of its look and feel by other device makers - should help to legitimize both technologies as complements, or alternatives, to the dominant Java and its associated interfaces. If Apple can spark renewed interest in mobile Ajax and new UI approaches, it will be Nokia that is most likely to push them into the mainstream - and of course, Nokia already has a phone using the Safari browser, whose mobile implementation it co-developed with Apple, and boasting many of the characteristics that caused such a stir at the iPhone's launch. While Nokia has been the most powerful supporter of mobile Java and of a mobile Internet/browser experience based on Java-oriented UIs (notably its own Series 60), it has recently become far less religious about its technology choices and has been casting its net wider, embracing Linux in its Internet Tablet 770, and showing signs of interest in Ajax. All of which points to an intensified focus on its own Safari and fluid interface efforts, and which reinforces the logic that Nokia and Apple could be partners, rather than rivals, in the media handset business (see Wireless Watch January 15, 2007, for more on this thesis). Nokia and Ajax Nokia said last spring that it was evaluating broader use of Ajax with its handsets, particularly in conjunction with its Safari-based browser, having included support for the software platform in its third-edition Series 60 device. "A lot of it has to do with the availability of the newer browsing platforms. We are going to have to look at developers. That's where Ajax will be getting a lot of play," Lee Epting, president of the Forum Nokia developer community of 1.3 million members, told The Register last year. Ajax will be important to Nokia because it has become a cornerstone of Web 2.0 techniques, which revolve around the browser as the only client, using Web services, fluid interfaces and other approaches to improve the online development and user experience. And Nokia is determined to lead the mobile implementation of Web 2.0 techniques, which are becoming prevalent - as is Ajax itself - on enterprise platforms. Last year it announced Widsets, which allows for dynamic mobile access to content using widgets, both features that are hallmarks of Web 2.0. The appeal of Ajax in such a strategy will be that it can enable software developers and service providers to give online services the level of interface functionality and responsiveness traditionally only found on desktop applications, and for the mobile world, it also supports applications that work in "occasionally connected" mode. As in the PC world, the practicality of using the browser as the universal mobile client is increasing - though there are still major hurdles before Ajax is really suited to mobile devices, including screen format. Mobile versions of Ajax applications have, to date, been hard to implement and usually need a whole new code base - in contrast to the simplicity of porting Flash applications to mobile architectures using Flash Lite. Given its ambivalence towards Flash, it will be in Apple's interest to facilitate a friendlier mobile Ajax environment, providing hooks to mobilize existing apps and enable them to run unchanged on desktop or mobile Safari. However, the advantages of the browser client - universal access from different devices and locations, support for Web services and so on - are ensuring that considerable work is going into improving the user experience, especially as mobile systems that are geared to open internet access rather than carrier-controlled "walled gardens" evolve. On cellular networks, Java's mobile incarnation, J2ME is emerging as the dominant application development and content delivery vehicle, but a browser-only model could support devices with smaller footprints and price tags. Opera and Ajax One significant boost to mobile Ajax appeared early in 2006 - the incorporation of Ajax support in the Opera Platform, which aims to extend the influence of the Opera browser in the mobile world by putting it in the forefront of a possible shift to a browser-only client. Opera, whose browser has a tiny share of the PC market, has always done better in the mobile world against Internet Explorer and others, and now believes it could ride the wave of interest in browser-only mobile clients to gain a significant market position. Its Opera Platform comprises its browser running in full screen mode; access to the phone's native functionality through an abstraction layer; and an Ajax framework for running multiple applications and "widgets" (a concept common in the Mac world, and adopted by Ajax, which revolves around downloadable, interactive software objects that provide a single service such as a map). Ajax provides a mechanism to implement widgets on browsers. Ajax is supported in the 17 million Opera mobile browsers shipped last year, enabling users to access desktop services such as Gmail and Google Maps. Not only is the Opera Platform the first mobile Ajax framework, but it also has a browser framework that, unlike others such as Backbase, is fully designed for mobile units, using the same code base on the browser and device. Desktop widgets can also run on the mobile device with minimal recoding, a major attraction for developers. Other advantages are that widgets can call other widgets, allowing for the creation of complex applications from simple browser-based components, and the Opera Platform allows access to device application programming interfaces, for better integration with legacy functions. This last is essential to make mobile Ajax really useful, since it enables access to data elements that are tightly coupled to the device itself, such as text messages, phone book and the SIM card. In the past, few browser-based platforms have been able to access these functions. This article was excerpted from Wireless Watch. For the complete article, e-mail paperboy@riderresearch.com.