Abstract
This IDC study examines the possibility that mass market feature phone Web
usage models may veer in the direction of widget frameworks rather than
browsers over the next several years. For the typical feature phone customer,
mobile Web/WAP experiences often fall short of the expectation set in a
wireline PC context, leading to depressed usage patterns and moderated data
ARPU. A new breed of widget framework providers (sometimes called on-device
portals, or ODPs) have emerged to bridge this gap and are poised to challenge
the prevailing WAP 2.0/xHTML model for mobile Web portal hegemony.
"Mobile widget frameworks tend to support richer and more personalized media
experiences and superior reporting/tracking, are less demanding in terms of
publisher/brand technical expertise needs, and offer greater access to feature
phone capabilities," says Lewis Ward, research manager in the Mobile Consumer
Services group. "But widget frameworks also tend to be more expensive to deploy
and update than WAP 2.0 sites, are limited to the device database supported by
the vendor, and could increase select security/privacy risks. At the end of the
day, it may be more about finding a proper balance between the two models."
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