On Nov 7, 2005, at 09:56, Curt Sampson wrote:
>
>> Do DOCOMO have a financial incentive in keeping browser capabilities
>> limited, or is this just slothfullness/arrogance/inertia/NIH (Not
>> Invented Here)?
>
> It could be some of both, but I have this weird little suspicion
> that a
> fairly powerful force on this is that Docomo does not want to outrace
> the vendors that are creating the websites.
>
> At this point, most Docomo websites are pretty much the same, and new
> capabilities are added slowly enough that the dumb vendors can easily
> keep up with the smart ones. This avoids having a small number of web
> sites stand out and make the others look bad, which in turn probably
> helps avoid "confusion in the market" and suchlike.
You can see this strategy in the release "PC site" browsers on their
newer mobiles. These use the latest Netfront browser which, like
Opera, can seamlessly switch between full and small screen modes and
does a pretty good job at rendering XHTML and CSS.
But on Docomo's mobiles, switching to small screen mode also switches
to the ubiquitous standards abhorrent Netfront browser found on every
other Docomo mobile, the two browsers don't even share the same
bookmarks.
Kyle
--
mobile web gear | pukupi.com | 34°40'n 135°30'e
Received on Fri Nov 11 04:27:35 2005