What’s Next in the Mobile Browser War? Actual Revenue.

[Commentary] The 20-year war for control of the browser has spurred huge advances in desktop, and now mobile, technologies. Yet Web giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple still haven’t figured out how to make the browser a profit center. Sure, Chrome plays a key role in Google’s overall multibillion-dollar search ad business, and Microsoft and Yahoo have monetized their browsers through ad-supported portals, to varying degrees of success, for over a decade. But the browser itself has mostly been treated as a free software tool.

Now, the meteoric rise in mobile Internet usage presents a new opportunity for technology companies to re-envision the browser not just as a free tool, but as a revenue generator. U.S. technology companies should anticipate the move away from apps toward the open mobile Web, finding ways to monetize the browser beyond ads. The largest and most sophisticated mobile Internet economy in the world, China, has already turned the mobile browser into an integrated mobile services platform. It won’t be long before U.S. consumers demand the same level of service from their mobile Web browsers that Chinese consumers already enjoy.

[Yongfu Yu is the chairman and CEO of UCWeb]