WebKit, Mobile, and Progress - Infrequently Noted

Google Chrome version 1 launched December 10 2008, so "early 2008" isn't accurate.

Hey Erik:

Do you know when WebKit was branched/stabilized for that release? What I'm mostly after is what the layout behavior would have been at the time. Regardless, I'll drop the "early". Thanks!

I whole-heartedly agree that those columns should be added, and that the outlook for webkit in the mobile market is moving quickly towards a good one (thanks to webkit and the differences in lifecycles).

However, I have to also point out that PPK is a saint for the amount of time and effort that he has put into releasing the information for all of us. I just needed to make sure that if he read this article, that he didn't feel that what he was doing was without appreciation.

The added data that Alex suggests would also be very beneficial and perhaps what makes all the research even more usable.

Thanks to both of you for trying to categorize all of this in an unbiased and informative way.

What would be nice would be if we could presume that the vendors would roll out updates to their phones.

Instead, the G1 is already out of the running for Android updates.

"If you figure a conservative 24 month average replacement cycle for smartphones, then the entire market for browsers turns over every two years"

Replacement cycle != Trash cycle

I don't know what percentage of people pass on phones to friends/relations or sell on ebay, but I'd guess that it's enough to skew the numbers to a turn over time that's longer.

Joe:

Good point! It'd be neat if someone had definitive market penetration rates to peg the numbers against. Particularly as lowly feature phones become web-aware, it'll start to matter more and more. There might also be the chance to get "stuck" if those hand-me-downs are models which for whatever reason never get OTA updates (to Jules's point).

Regards

What about the developing world?