News

Mobile web browsing steps closer to reality

The OMTP has announced that it has become a sponsor of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI), to further bolster the joint goal of making browsing the web from mobile devices a reality.

OMTP, the organisation behind the hugely successful BONDI initiative, will use this sponsorship to drive standards and best practice which will ultimately enable users of mobile devices to have the easiest and best possible access to the immense services and applications available via the web.

The W3C Mobile Web Initiative is an activity which actively promotes the mobile Web. It works to provide best practices and recommendations to the industry to enable a better mobile web experience. OMTP believes in a consistent mobile web environment which is enabled through W3C standardisation.

Over the past few years, there has been massive innovation in the development of web services and applications available to users of PCs. Combining these advances with the personal features of the mobile device will stimulate even better and more unique services to a mass market of mobile phone users, which greatly outnumbers the number of PC users.

The enabling of services which can be accessed by a large proportion of the world’s mobile phone users will, not only, stimulate new development and increase the number of developers but will also provide unseen levels of new types of services. Whether for millions of users or just for a small community, a web application or widget will provide the easiest way of developing a new service.

The OMTP BONDI initiative, which provides a standardised set of interfaces for web developers to access native capabilities on mobile devices, is essential in providing the consistency necessary to enable this vision. BONDI also provides the security features which will be essential in protecting the user from potential abuse from malicious web applications.

“The W3C boasts the support and credibility to standardise the technologies required to best enable mobile web browsing in the future,” said Tim Raby, CEO OMTP. “We are very happy to be sponsoring the Mobile Web Initiative. The industry is looking forward to seeing huge improvements in the mobile web experience over the coming years.”

Added Philipp Hoschka, W3C Ubiquitous Web Domain Lead: "We welcome OMTP's sponsorship of W3C's Mobile Web Initiative. Sponsorship and active participation from OMTP will help promote the mission of One Web and greatly assist in improving the mobile Web to the overall benefit of the end user."