Some bad smartphone news from Opera, Access (NetFront) and Palm Digital Media (PalmReader)
December 26, 2003 [MS Smartphone] | By anonymous 1.
Unfortunately apart from AvantGo, also several other mobile software vendors donīt want to make software for Microsoft smartphone - "too small market" they say... We present here direct answers from 3 software manufacturers and some possible workarounds...
(on picture above: the NetFront 3.1 browser - multiple windows, JavaScript and Java support, and small screen rendering technologies [JustFit, SmartFit] - thatīs nice and not worse than Opera browser, but unfortunately available only for Pocket PC, not for Microsoft Smartphone; more about this browser read in our software review here)
- our good old pal, whose name is (no kidding!) Pal A. Hvistendahl from Norwegian company Opera, who is there a Director Marketing Communications, confirmed that Opera has no plans whatsoever to make the Opera browser for all Windows Mobile devices, including Microsoft smartphones. Behavior of Opera company from Norway resembles behavior of Norway itself! Just imagine: they are located in Europe but they donīt want to join European Union because they consider themselves too rich (source of their richness is the big oil resources, not their work). The same is with Opera company: they get fat orders from Symbian vendors and thatīs why they pretend to be anti-Microsoft...
possible workaround: use the built-in Pocket Internet Explorer - in Windows Mobile 2003 - Smartphone 2003 and Pocket PC 2003 - it can render regular pages quite well
UPDATE: our readers from Norway pointed out that first name of Mr. Hvistendahl from Opera corporation is in reality spelled "Pål" or "Paal", so it is not exactly the same as the word "pal" in English...
- another possible workaround for lack of Opera for MS Smartphone could be NetFront browser made by Japanese company Access - after all they are making and selling it already for Pocket PC devices. Unfortunately we got negative answer from Tang Ning from Access corporation:
We are sorry but there are no official plane for NetFront web download
for Microsoft Smarphone. We can port them but it is project bases at
present. So if you are thinking to use our NetFront for specific project or
company uses, please let us know details. We could be your help.
... what means something like "if you order it, we can make it for you" and practically it means, that without order from hardware vendor or network operator the Access corporation doesnīt want to port their NetFront browser to Microsoft Smartphone!
- as we all know Microsoft smartphones doesnīt have Microsoft Reader (mistake of Microsoft: Microsoft decided that smartphone users are not reading eBooks) and the only serious eBook reader for Microsoft smartphone is the one from our friends from Mobipocket.com. Unfortunately some people already have several hundreds of Palm Digital Media eBooks and they would like to have PalmReader for Microsoft to read eBooks. Here is what Josh from Palm Digital Media said about this topic to MPx200.org:
We continue to evaluate the smartphone platform for Palm Reader but
donīt have any immediate plans for a smartphone version. It is
something that we would love to develop and release immediately as the
smartphone community is expanding rapidly. But development time and
cost are factors that we take into consideration as well.
Not to despair though! As more and more Microsoft smartphones hit the markets, situation will improve. One major sign of such improvement is the fact that AppForge will release Booster for Microsoft Smartphone very soon - Mark Lummus, who is a Vice President, Product Management at AppForge promised it personally during a phone call wih us. AppForgeīs Booster is a kind of virtual machine and will bring immediately availability of hundreds or thousands of new software applications to Microsoft Smartphone...
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