Much talked about posting by Andreas Constantinou inappropriately titled “Bye Bye Browser“. In this article, Andreas does not dismiss the mobile browser as much as the mobile browser business in the face of open source. I don’t think Andreas is wrong in his analysis as much as incomplete.

I am a big fan of Chetan Sharma, but disagree with his comment that Openwave failed to keep up with the times. Openwave has and continues to produce great mobile technology. The AJAX stuff I saw at 3GSM was simply outstanding.

Having at one time been the chief technologist and run the client business at Phone.com and Openwave, I certainly have a bit of a bias at how I look at the situation.

What is missing in Andreas’ analysis is that in today’s marketplace, it seldom matters in a commercial sense what browser is in a phone. Today, consumers make their purchasing decision based on the phones industrial design and price point, not the brand of the browser. In such a climate, and given the margin pressures of the OEM business, the handset manufacturer would be irresponsible to not go with the cheapest source that meets the needs of their customers (who are usually the MNOs, not the consumer).

As I mentioned, Openwave has done a great job continuing to innovate in their handset technologies given the AJAX support I saw at 3GSM. Some customers will pay for that capability when they believe it will make a difference in their marketplace, KDDI being an example of this. But for much of the world, its probably “who cares”. For an operator or OEM, its Monday, do I worry about my browser or do I worry about my mobile television solution?

Openwave needs to arrive at a value proposition that resonates with the MNOs and handset OEMs (and makes the Openwave offer worth the extra $), and/or Openwave has to make an Openwave-enabled phone resonate with consumers to the point that consumers will pick an Openwave phone over a non-Openwave phone.

A value proposition based on good technology is not good enough to accomplish that. Rather, Openwave has to continue to move up the value chain and offer consumer-level solutions. Rather than compare the cost of an Openwave browser with an open source browser, the comparison needs to be the cost (license, porting cost, support, etc.) of a set of Openwave phone software with the OEM building/buying a handful of other solutions. In all likelihood, these are not client-only solutions, but network solutions like Nokia’s LifeBlog. From what I can see, Openwave’s widgets offering is not a big enough step (its still technology and not solution).