Mobile apps 'will become a pimple on the mobile web'
Mobile apps 'will become a pimple on the mobile web'The future of mobile internet was up for debate at the first Media Marketplace conference in Leeds.
Richard Carter, digital director of the Leeds-based Bolser Agency, outlined his predictions for the future of the mobile industry at the first Media Marketplace conference in Leeds.
He said: "In the future mobile apps will become a pimple on the surface of the mobile web.
"That's because [the mobile web] is a great platform to develop on. You are not bound by the restrictions of app stores. And it's future proof... what you do will work on mobiles that haven't even been developed yet."
Carter said he wasn't ruling out apps, "which are great at interacting with the technology inside the phone", such as the accelerometer and the camera.
But he added: "As it moves forwards browsers will get cleverer - they'll be able to talk to the cameras, the accelerometers and all the other technology."
Fellow speaker Matt Edgar, who works in product innovation at Orange, predicted that the mobile apps market would generate $38 billion by 2015.
Carter's colleague Ashley Bolser said that for businesses to make money from apps, they would have to offer something that genuinely "adds value".
"Novely apps have been and gone. Most apps are only used once and then thrown away. Only a handful are used every day - Facebook being one of them."
The audience at Elland Road also heard from Nokia, who said that out of the 3.7 billion mobile phone users in the world 2.2 billion are connected to the internet.
Greg Merten, the mobile giant's head of developer relations, said: "We want to reach the next one billion people accessing internet on mobiles.
"The first thing you should do is optimise your website so it works on mobiles. Then, if you believe it is worth it, look into apps.
"Our low-end phones are now touchscreens, so make sure your website looks good even on low-end phones."
Merten said Nokia's App Store equivalent, Ovi, was now doing four million downloads a day, two million more than last summer.
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The same was said about PC applications 10 years ago, that everything would shift into the web and we'd no longer have applications running locally on our machines.
That hasn't happened, and it won't happen. Why? Because there will always be applications which are better off being run locally in order to utilise the computing power of the device.
Also, many apps have no need of an always on internet connection in order to work, so receive no benefit from being put on the web. In fact, are disadvantaged by being reliant on an internet connection. Imagine if Amazon's Kindle only worked if it had an internet connection - you could never take it on the train!
Lastly, because of the diverse range of mobile device capabilities, there will never be web applications which can fully utilise the capabilities of every device. Web apps are always forced to cater for the lowest common denominator. A good analogy is the way that web developers still have to develop websites which run in IE6 at a resolution of 800x600. Yes, you can create apps which scale, but they never look as good or run as well as a natively targeted app.
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It's a little short-sighted to suggest that there's no future in mobile apps, or conversely that apps will bring about the demise of the mobile web.
The mobile web is a certainty as long as the next generation continue to use their Blackberry devices to access online content and chat services.
But there's always going to be a demand for specialised non-connected experiences that push the hardware to its limits. As tempting as it is to see the latest generation of web standards as the answer to all of our programmatic prayers, there's still a great deal we can do with native apps that simply wouldn't be possible or practical through a mobile web browser.
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I don’t think the article is saying that apps are going away, just that they will become a more specialized tool in a box that has another more ubiquitous piece of equipment, that being the mobile web. Interestingly, there are many mobile “apps” out there right now right now that are not apps at all. They are simply launchers that take the user to a mobile web-site that has the look and feel of an application. That trend will continue and gain steam with strategies that will allow businesses to maintain just one platform, reduce costs and achieve the same objectives in a way that is convenient to users. At Modapt (www.modapt.com), we get inquiries from companies every day searching for a solution that can leverage and adapt their current website assets for the mobile web.
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@Apps its a upcoming model in the mobile device capabilities and at the same time its a web applications to listen such a lowest common device... Web Development Company
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