HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Opera Mobile
Opera (
http://www.opera.com/mobile
)
has two separate browsers for mobile phones:
Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. In Opera Mini, the Opera Presto browser engine is
located on a server. In Opera Mobile, it is installed on the phone. Currently, Opera Mini
holds a large percentage of market share among other browsers, but for enterprise
HTML5 applications, Opera Mobile supports the core specifications we need, such as
Web Storage, Web Workers, and Geolocation.
Internet Explorer Mobile
Windows Phone 7.5 features a version of Internet Explorer Mobile with a rendering
engine that is based on Internet Explorer 9. So the simplest way of explaining what
Windows Phone supports is to say that it supports what IE9 supports, including Web
Storage and Geo location. The supported specifications for IE9 Mobile can be found at
On a better note, Windows Phone 8 supports IE10. Internet Explorer 10 includes much
better support for such HTML5 features as WebSockets, Web Workers, Application
Cache, and IndexedDB.
Mobile Browser Market Share
As of the latest worldwide report on browser market share, WebKit-based browsers are
clearly in the lead with over 80% of the market (
Figure 2-5
). Right now, Android and
iOS dominate, but as new operating systems, such as Mozilla's HTML5-based mobile
B2G project, emerge we could see another shift of power in the ongoing “browser war.”
Things are moving fast already. During the months that it took me to write this topic,
WebKit-based browsers grew from a 75% market share in October 2011 to more than
80% in 2012. Opera Mini shrunk from 18.65% to 12%. IE browsers grew from .16% to .
58%, but Microsoft is just starting up its marketing machine for the Windows Phone
platform in 2012—so expect that IE number to grow.
You can check the latest browser statistics at
http://www.netmarket
