The results are dramatic, as the iPhone demonstrated. By early 2008, less than a year after being released, the iPhone’s Safari browser was the No. 1 mobile browser in the United States, and No. 2 globally, trailing the Nokia Web browser, according to StatCounter. Google released data early in 2008 showing that Christmas 2007 traffic to its site from iPhone users outstripped all other mobile devices, at a point when the iPhone had just 2% of the smartphone market.

Another technology trend is intersecting with these advances: the rapid evolution of the HTML 5 and Cascading Style Sheets 3 Web standards. Some see the requirements of force behind fast and widespread adoption of both standards. 

For example, two new HTML 5 APIs, database and application cache (“appcache”) are already being implemented by Google in last Spring’s new . Database lets a mobile browser locally store Gmail messages in a local MySQL database; AppCache lets it locally store the Gmail functions and user interface in JavaScript and CSS files.