Set the wild world of apps aside for a moment. Strangeloop today is announcing a product designed to make websites on mobile devices move faster, and it has nothing to do with accelerating apps.
Crazy? Strangeloop President Joshua Bixby doesn't think so. He has an IMBd app on his phone, but when he's sitting there watching a movie, he's still more apt to search for information about a movie via the search box on his phone. "I'm convinced apps are not going to be the future ... I don't want to have 50 apps. I think the Web is gonna win."
Very much aware of the ongoing debate over apps vs. Web, he points to Strangeloop-sourced figures on a PowerPoint that says 1 out of 3 mobile users will still choose to view the full site on a handheld vs. a mobile-specific site even though the m-site is faster.
Strangeloop's latest product, called Mobile Site Optimizer (MSO), is in beta but will be available in the fourth quarter of this year. The company says MSO was built from the ground up to respond to the unique challenges in mobile environments.
The version announced today supports iOS, Android and Windows. Features include mobile SuperCache for local storage; Touch Event Conversion for automatically converting clicks into touch events; and Dynamic Payload Decision Making for determining if a user is using Wi-Fi or 3G/4G and customizes site optimizations accordingly.
Bixby points to another PowerPoint that shows pages load 2.5 times faster on an iPad when Strangeloop's site optimizer is being used.
Strangeloop doesn't mess with the browser on phones but it rewrites websites so they work better with the browser, he explains. There are browser technologies that claim to be faster, but the real limitation is not in the browser but in the sites, he says.
Strangeloop says MSO is just the latest in a series of industry firsts from the Vancouver, B.C.-based company. It claims to be the first to offer advanced site optimization via the cloud as well as the first to integrate Google's SPDY protocol into its products.
Companies such as eBay, PayPal, Visa, PETCO and Travelocity use Strangeloop's advanced optimization solutions to accelerate their websites and enterprise applications.