The Next generation of Mobile fanfare
On daily basis you either get news about new apps released or a mobile device (Smart phone or tablet). The growing trend is not to get anyone worried but our life is gradually moving towards “hosted life”. Hosted life means the crave for full dependency on handheld devices.
If you can pause for a second, could you sincerely tell how you feel when you misplaced your mobile phone. For a few minutes, you will be filling agitated and show lots of emotions that reflects personal attachment to these devices. You will also agree with me that there is less and less of effort to retain information in your brain. Why? The simple reason is that you can easily store these information on your smart phone. The implication is then that when you lose your handheld device, you can hardly remember anyone’s phone number including yours. Isn’t that funny enough?
In the same vein big mobile giants are continuously fighting over the dominance of the mobile market place. Microsoft is aware and worried that Google and Apple are rapidly grasping a large chunk of the market share on mobile platforms and this may likely continue to impact interest on Personal Computers. Microsoft may also have realized that if companies shift their attention to handheld devices, the demand for Windows PCs will drastically fall. It won’t be long and infact there is more interest in handheld devices now more than ever.
The latest Gartner report indicates that “By 2015 media tablet shipments will reach around 50% of laptop shipments and Windows will likely be in third place behind Android and Apple. We believe the net result is that Microsoft’s share of the client platform (PC, tablet, smart phone) will likely be reduced to 60% and it could fall below 50%.”
Microsoft in its quest to be competitive in this war recently released the latest Window 8 devices. Most interestingly, Microsoft is a little ahead of the game by providing support for HTM5 in Windows 8.
HTM5 is the next major shift in mobile technology development platform. As the mobile trends continue to evolve, there is evidence that companies are gradually moving away from native apps to Web applications. And the reasons are obvious:
- With Mobile apps, your mobile solutions will be write once run anywhere. It wouldn’t matter if your device is iPhones, iPads, Android phones or the Kindle Fire. This will increase Return on Investment for many companies and mobile technocrats
- Easy deployment and no proprietary development. This is good news for developers
- HTML5 uses modern technologies including CSS3
- Unlike native apps, the version is always current as users will always pick up the latest versions
- Web apps are already positioned to leverage cloud technologies and services. This is a huge plus
However, native apps may likely take a long time to replace because native apps glue closer to the mobile OS and thus have better integration with graphics and thus excellent look and feel. Native apps also have easy integration with your mobile handheld hardware like camera, GPS, etc. Like any other technical challenge, this will not take long to overcome in web applications.
Probably one of the reasons it might take longer is that companies like Apple that have huge returns on Native app store will do everything in its power to forestall this transition.
As a matter of fact, companies and investors alike are watching closely with exasperated interest. They know that there is increasing dependency on these smart devices and will continue to channel a lot of resources to keep the mobile fanfare growing. The future of native apps stores will also depend on the success of web apps. Apple store may potentially get a hit if HTML5 adoption succeeds to penetrate the market place. And there is no evidence that this will not happen very soon.
You are welcome to drop your perspective on this.
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