Bitstream today announced commercial availability of the second generation of its BOLT mobile browser. Among BOLT 2.1's new features are tighter integration with Facebook and support for HTML5 video as well as several new Flash video streaming websites.
"In just a few years it is expected that more people will be using the Internet on mobile devices than from desktop computers," said Anna Magliocco-Chagnon, CEO of Bitstream. "Bitstream has engineered BOLT to maximize the utility of the Internet on mobile for end users, give handset manufacturers an important competitive differentiator for their mobile phone lines, and provide mobile network operators another way to compete for new users as well as to better manage the data usage on their networks. Bitstream has always believed there should be a singular entity called the Internet, as opposed to a desktop iteration alongside a lighter, less functional mobile version."
An April 2010 report from the analyst firm Morgan Stanley found that video accounts for 69 percent of all mobile data traffic worldwide. With the inclusion of HTML5 video, the BOLT mobile browser is now claimed to provide the industry's broadest video support. HTML5 video is a new standard for delivering streaming video via an Internet browser without requiring an external plug-in. Though a relatively new standard, a study released this month by the video aggregator and search firm MeFeedia found that 26 percent of online video available is today already encoded for HTML5.
Through the use of BOLT, users can watch HTML5 videos on any website on which they appear.
BOLT 2.1, Bitstream is claimed to offer the largest selection of Flash video support available on all categories of mobile phones, adding mtv.com, nick.com, bbc.co.uk (UK), maniatv.com, svtplay.se (Sweden), hungama.com (India) and bollywoodhungama.com (India) to a list that already included youtube.com, cnn.com, espn.com, video.google.com, video.yahoo.com, vids.myspace.com, blip.tv, dailymotion.com, metacafe.com, rutube.ru and www.mocospace.com.
BOLT 2.1's integration with Facebook – by far the most popular domain visited by BOLT users around the world – includes the ability to use Facebook's instant messaging service and to seamlessly copy text or links and post them to a Facebook account directly from within the BOLT browser. The most important new feature of BOLT 2.1 is tabbed browsing which gives people the ability to simultaneously browse multiple websites and easily switch between them, a functionality that was a top request from BOLT users. Additional notable upgrades in BOLT 2.1 include a faster widget gallery with updated user interface and a server upgrade to WebKit 4.03, keeping BOLT up-to-date with the latest Web standards.
BOLT has been installed nearly 7 million times since its debut in February 2009. Over the past few months, more than 30,000 users installed the consumer version of BOLT each day, while hundreds of thousands of people began using pre-installed versions of BOLT on newly available devices from Bitstream's OEM partners in Asia and Eastern Europe.