Just as a new report on Portal Wars has been released we are now reading about telcos in South Korea openly encouraging off-portal exploration to their users. Couple this with the statistics from a recent Nokia report on smart phone usage - nicely summed up by Russell Beattie - that shows over half of their research sample were browsing off-portal sites.

This is relevant to my previous post about the Opera browser because suddenly, with this new software on my phone, I feel that the gateway is open and I am having a truly internet experience on my phone. I am browsing my own sites, and a range of others, thinking, wow, these are just standard websites and I have full access. Despite the fact that some customization for mobile screens would be desirable, it is no longer necessary to think that the only way to reach the market is by negotiating with telcos and fitting into their highly controlled walled gardens.

Of course, there are many challenges in reaching your audiences directly through off-portal mobile sites - such as simple billing, content discovery, quality of video streaming and the impact of high data charges.

My interview with Jane Zweig, from The Shosteck Group - the company who released the Portal Wars report - provides an insight into this rapidly changing landscape.

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