Mowser was a browser that would take sites designed for the web and render them for mobiles, launched last year. I say was, because its founder, Russell Beattie has decided to pull the plug after struggling to find funding.
Aside from his debts, Beattie said on his blog that he decided to stop development on the browser because “I don’t actually believe in the “Mobile Web” anymore, and therefore am less inclined to spend time and effort in a market I think is limited at best, and dying at worst. I’m talking specifically about sites that are geared 100% towards mobile phones and have little to no PC web presence”.
But Beattie isn’t suggesting that people don’t want to use the mobile web *at all*, just they don’t want to use it when it feels so much worse than a PC browser. The solution to getting more web traffic, he says, is better devices and better browsers. Here here. Perhaps if every phone had a whizzy browser and a big screen, the mobile web would be used everywhere. But given we’re years off mid tier and low tier devices getting such capabilities, if they ever do, is there a way of encouraging mobile web take up in the meantime?