Different browsers-Dolphin's way to success

Dolphin Browser (English name: Dolphin-browser) is an effort to provide users with an excellent operating experience personalized mobile phone browser, by the Hundred Information (MOBOTAP) company development and production. Powerful features and a fluent user experience provide fast and comprehensive support for users ' mobile phones, and are one of the most popular mobile browsers on smartphones on the web today ().

Dolphin Browser can become a heterogeneous browser, for its success, technology flow and accurate market positioning, is one of the decisive role of the two major factors. As for the realization of its commercial value, it still needs to wait for HTML5 to be validated.

At the Global Mobile Communications Conference held in Barcelona, Mobotap Information Technology Co., Ltd. convened a new version of the Dolphin browser launch. At the press conference, founder and CEO Yang Yongzhi introduced the latest version of the Dolphin browser's voice control operation. This "pomp" is the first time for the Chinese developer community.

The Dolphin Browser, which landed Android harsh in February 2010, ushered in its 10 millionth user in the United States in December 2011. In the United States, Dolphin Browser is definitely one of the most famous Chinese developer works. It not only attracts high-end people like Google vice President Andy Rubin, Getjar founder Ilja Laurs and Lady Gaga as users, but also the star of American VCs and tech-media chases. Just before the end of the CES2012, Aydin Senkut, the former Google 30th employee who has already settled in the investment world, also invited a full Yang Yongzhi ride on his own private jet to show his investment intentions.

Dolphin browser in July 2011 only to return to the domestic line, although currently in the second camp of Third-party browsers, but rely on the Dolphin team outstanding innovative ability, the mobile internet in the first wave of the spring tide is a success, harvest quite abundant.

However, the mobile internet, which broke out in 2011, has entered the crossroads of both market and technology shuffling. The ability to keep the pace of innovation and not get out of the way will determine whether dolphins can maintain and expand their strengths. At the same time, as one of the most widely untapped apps in the app camp, Dolphins will find their way in the future.

Different browsers

After graduating from Hust, Yang Yongzhi joined Microsoft's Asian Research Institute. His first job was to hatch creative ideas in Microsoft's most innovative department. The famous arranges Hub in Windows phone's Metro interface is written by Yang Yongzhi's team.

The experience of Microsoft's close contact with interpersonal interaction technology has enabled Yang Yongzhi to accumulate many inspirations and experiences related to the use experience. At the end of 2009, Android's Open-source development spree led him to the entrepreneurial path. In fact, although the business card has "Beijing Wuhan San Francisco" Three office, but did not go abroad to study the experience of Yang Yongzhi is a authentic "turtle" geek, but he and his dolphin browser has gone an unusual way of innovation.

Dolphin browsers are blockbuster because they first applied multi-touch technology to the Android platform at the end of 2009. At that time, Google has not yet released a formal support for multi-touch version of the Android2.2 (but the encapsulated underlying technology is in fact supported), which makes the United States keen on the technology of the geeks are greatly impressed.

Dolphin Browser so a cannon and red, one months users will reach 250,000 and attracted TechCrunch attention. The Dolphin Browser, which has been modified too much for Android, was once taken off the shelves by Google, but returned to Android shortly after communication.

Yang Yongzhi is not intoxicated with this success. The Dolphin Browser then took the lead in adding multiple tags, gesture manipulation and plug-in platform features in subsequent versions. This constant innovation has enabled it to have 1 million users in the United States in March 2010, up from 5 million a year later.

Dolphins are now a highly customizable browser. In fact, the Yang Yongzhi in the name of the product at the beginning, is to borrow dolphins this clever and easy to domesticate animal image to imply the ease of use of their products.

When asked why the dolphin team, not other browsers, veteran the first technological breakthroughs, Yang Yongzhi's answer seemed pertinent and modest. This, he argues, is because legend, such as Chrome, Firefox and Opera, with its innovative capabilities, are hard to pitched from the PC Internet, and the mobile app model cannot translate their past experiences and business models, which is hard to stir up their desire to innovate; On the other hand, by 2011 , the computing power of mobile terminals is still very mediocre, too many function calls can make the browser run very slowly. This allows them to make erroneous judgments about the direction of technology upgrades in this area.

And dolphins are using the past browser veteran the gap between the children, successfully in the mobile Internet lap a large area.

The Dolphin browser's difference is not just its technology flow. Accurate market positioning is another important reason for dolphins to succeed.

In the June 2010, Yang Yongzhi, who had been successful overseas, led dolphin browsers back to the China App Store. This time the domestic mobile browser battlefield has been smoke. In addition to UC, where the mobile internet has worked for years, the 3G portal released the Go browser in June 2009, followed by July, when Tencent officially released its QQ mobile browser. In addition, Opera Mini, Baidu and other forces have been killed into this battlefield.

Compared with other mobile browsers in the domestic market, Yang Yongzhi gives Dolphins a unique brand positioning: A high-end browser that pays more attention to experience and ignores traffic. Look at the Chinese market, this position is unique. Because in the real mobile Internet industry environment, the traffic fee is the user and the application developer can not ignore a constraint condition. Therefore, whether it is as the elder UC Browser, or from behind the ready-take-all QQ browser, or other, no one is holding high "provincial traffic" signs.

In this respect, Yang Yongzhi has its own thinking. Smart-phone users, he argues, are on the high end of the list, and they pay more attention to the user experience than the flow fees. In fact, he does find that there will be many users on the phone with the fashion of multiple browsers, in the last half a month when the flow is sufficient to use the dolphin, and in the next half month when the flow is not enough to use other provincial traffic browser.

"Good user experience and save traffic is inconsistent, the provincial traffic is the product of WAP that special era." "Yang Yongzhi said.

As a result of outstanding innovation and clear market positioning, Dolphin Browser returned home, they received from the Sequoia and Jingwei 10 million of dollars in venture capital. and American Professional magazine PC last November the "2011 Best free iOS Apps" application, dolphin Browser tops.

Yang Yongzhi not implicitly called dolphins "the most powerful browser in the mobile internet age." Although the Analysys International "China Mobile browser User Survey Report 2011" shows that the QQ mobile phone browser and UC browser market penetration reached 54.3%, 40.7%, but in his view, to UC, Opera Mini and Firefox as the representative of the Third-party mobile browsers are not enough to fear.

In fact, in the ranking of various competitors, Yang Yongzhi the other star app in the first place, the default browser in the second place, UC, Opera, Firefox and so on in the third place.

In his view, the mobile terminal screen and the user's stay time is limited, each user will not use more than 10. But those commonly used game class or the Life information class application, has occupied the massive user's energy, therefore these non-peer star application is the dolphin's first competitor; the advantages of a default browser like Safari are obvious, and Google officially released its mobile Chrome browser earlier this year, Its priority is to be built into a number of terminals in the sense that this is the second largest competitor of dolphins; As for third-party browsers, Yang Yongzhi that opera and Firefox are too burdened with PC Internet, and that their ability to innovate on the internet is hard to compete with new companies like Turner. and QQ and 360 in the mobile terminal browser layout, while there are still other applications with synergies, but because the entrance is tightly controlled by Apple (Android slightly better), these PC Internet strong on the mobile internet has been greatly weakened, the intended style of translation of the 360 products at the beginning of the new year was off the shelves, That is the proof of the situation-that is, the cost of the market is not too much.

Look forward to the outbreak point

Although there are a lot of URL links in the Dolphin Browser's tab bar and quick access bar, Yang Yongzhi told The Economist that these are free links. In fact, when the Sequoia and Jingwei Investment Dolphin team, also did not raise the profit target. After all, in the current situation of mobile Internet, it is unrealistic to rely on a tool to realize profit.

Another fact is that the application of mobile Internet is extremely expensive in a fragmented pattern. Dolphin browser in the birth of more than 2 years, Yang Yongzhi basically did not spend money to promote, is entirely relying on a variety of social tools to spread Word-of-mouth, and in a long period of time it also "donated" way to use the fee download mode.

"There is not much room for imagination in the present pattern." "Yang Yongzhi to the business value" frankly.

While it is not intended to make a profit in the short term, this does not mean that Yang Yongzhi is less enterprising in terms of business value. In fact, the dolphin team has been eyeing the key variables of change in the industry--html5 the advent of the changing app model.

PC Internet browser is b/s (browser/server) technology model, the current browser all business models are based on this technology model. However, the mobile end of the revolution, the app user experience so that the model was left out, the PC Internet early C/s (client/server) mode is currently the only choice for mobile browsers.

App is actually a packaged package, the search can only be applied to the layer, can not query the application of internal information. Web apps can be easily retrieved across applications, facilitating the flow of information to achieve business value. At the same time, both iOS and Android have strict restrictions on third-party browsers, no deep calls, no close integration with the system. including camera filters, texting and other functions can not be achieved. This leads to the advantages of technology flows such as Yang Yongzhi that cannot be fully performed.

Yang Yongzhi to reporters that HTML5 can not only translate the business model of PC browser, but also greatly save the developer's operating costs. This is because IOS, Android, and Windows Phone's three camps have different programming languages. Today's developers are generally struggling to invest three of human costs to develop these three platforms. And HTML5 can make this problem solved. It enables mobile browsers to be cross-platform, free from installation, maintenance-free, and dynamic updates.

On the one hand can expand the business model, on the other hand can save operating costs, Yang Yongzhi that the arrival of HTML5 is bound to become the Dolphin browser to achieve the "Hand of God." Yang Yongzhi revealed that, in view of the importance of HTML5 for the company, the Dolphin team has been involved in research and development for a long time, but the timing of the announcement is not yet ripe.

For mobile browsers, the flow of business is still to be done, but to wait until the ripe time to do a strategic expansion. Yang Yongzhi waiting for the break point in the stick.

He believes that HTML5 will largely change the app-based usage habits that users have been trained by Apple, and mobile browsers will inevitably play the role of platform and portal. In other words, the day the mobile end user returns from app to the web is the Dolphin browser's ambition-he's going to kill a engagement after he's led the dolphin team to successfully change the habits of the user's Web browser.

Considering that the domestic flow fee will also enter the descent channel, the combination of these factors, dolphin browser development space is very considerable.

Although the layout is robust, Yang Yongzhi is still trying to solve the market penetration problem of dolphin browsers to prepare for the outbreak. In the second half of last year, new competitors such as Baidu have joined the Red Sea competition of mobile browsers, in the fierce competition, 3G Portal's Go browser has withdrawn from the market competition.

"I believe we can find a better model than traffic when we have a larger user base," he said. Yang Yongzhi to the Economist.