WebRTC on Mobile is Still Science Fiction
How much noise can an Opera singer make?
I am usually saying that WebRTC on mobile is a done deal today. There are 3 ways to tackle it:
- Ignore it – don't do mobile
- Use it when it is available in the browser (that's Firefox, Chrome and Opera – and only on Android)
- Port WebRTC on your own, or have someone else port it for you, and then wrap it with an app
Was it this Opera?
- We already have Firefox and Chrome for Android supporting WebRTC
- Chrome is way more popular on Android than Opera
- Opera is like… the fifth browser (after IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari). Who cares about it? And who has it installed and in use?
- Opera announced their beta version with WebRTC for Android just last month, so this was the obvious next step – we've seen it before with both Chrome and Firefox for Android
- When it was Firefox's and Chrome's turn to go Android and GA – they didn't catch as much popularity as I can tell
- When Apple finally adds WebRTC support to iOS (I don't really care about OS X here – we have Chrome for that)
- When Google finally gets WebRTC into Android's WebView AND gets that version of Android into enough consumer hands
Tsahi Levent-Levi
Independent WebRTC analyst. I help companies ship real-time communications they can actually monitor. 20+ years in the comms space, last 13 focused on WebRTC.
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Good reality check on mobile. So as an alternative, and to enable our enterprise and app developer customers with multi-platform immediately.. OpenClove has a "WebRTC Browser" on both iOS and Android.. its called LiveBoard Lite (download from http://liveboard.me).
Any developer using our JavaScript based Engage Conversations Player for live communications on their web app, will automatically work on mobile and tablets using LiveBoard.. Code-Once-Works-Across-Devices.
Just some food for thought for some of the developers out there... till WebRTC becomes universal.
Shubh,
This approach of taking the middle ground between an app and a browser is interesting. It will also be interesting to see how this gets adopted.
Intel's Crosswalk (https://crosswalk-project.org/) packages a chromium build as a more updated webview, works on Android 4.0+, and it includes webrtc. So I think if apps build on it, it can get webrtc in the hands of a LOT more android users. Yeah, iOS still sucks. :(
Crosswalk is interesting, but I don't see it assisting Android in any way - more like what will be packaged into Tizen.
Android is Google's turf, and they are working on WebRTC inside webview. Once they get it out the door, it will be hard to displace it on Android. Fragmentation will still be an issue in reaching to the older userbase.
There is Mobile-Chrome-Apps on github. It allows us to wrap Web app into Cordova with Chrome enabled WebView. Unfortunately there is no possibility now to run JavaScript in background service for receiving Incoming calls https://github.com/MobileChromeApps/mobile-chrome-apps/issues/322
We do have working WebRTC libraries for iOS and Android and there may be others out there. You might add a fourth way to tackle WebRTC on mobile:
4. Get a WebRTC native library for iOS or Android and build native your native app around it.
And 3 is very hard still probably better to buy versus build.
Should be:
4. Get a WebRTC native library for iOS or Android and build your native app around it.
For me 3 and 4 are one and the same. They simply mean you need to have WebRTC ported natively with an app on top of it.
Doing it on your own, outsourcing it, buying it ready-made or using a fully fledged WebRTC API Platform has the same functional result with the same user experience - the differences between them are tactical ones.
Is it a quick and easy process to make a mobile website based on WebRTC from a desktop website based on WebRTC? Is an API required for the mobile website?
Is it a quick and easy process to make an iOS app from a mobile website that is based on WebRTC? Is an API required for the iOS app?
Thanks for all your help!
Mobile website running on Chrome for Android should be straightforward if you have one running WebRTC on the desktop. For iOS it is currently impossible.
iOS apps (or Android ones) - you can port WebRTC on your own and use or go for an API platform to do that for you (see here: https://bloggeek.me/choosing-webrtc-api-platform/)