Ok so my brief report on the future of platforms and sdks it looks from the talk that there will be a move towards web applications in a noticeable way in the future.
• Google Engineering vice president Vic Gundotra predicts that the Web would prevail as the dominant mobile application development platform.
• He thinks this will happen despite the huge success of Apple’s App Store. And their own investment into an app store (which is said to soon be the dominate force) • He says its down to the harsh economics of maintaining multiple platform-specific copies of applications is pushing development to the Web. which makes sense because smaller companies are seeking entry into the app sphere
• according to a source i found the price of multi-platform apps is a top concern for businesses
• Security/privacy and the cost of developing for multiple mobile platforms are cited as the top mobile adoption concerns (53% and 52% respectively). (http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/79181
• To quote Gundotra “We believe the web has won and over the next several years, the browser, for economic reasons almost, will become the platform that matters and certainly thats where Google is investing.” (although google would say that if everything is made from web application google will be the ones who get the advertising revenue)
• Backing up his claim was another panelist from nokia (although he would say that given the thrashing their app market received)
As with any commercial decision, there is no absolute right or wrong answers – just strategies that are better suited to some situations rather than others. As an agency, we will be using a mix of approaches – native, PhoneGap, and other frameworks as well (such as Corona for Game App development). However, broadly speaking the advantages split out as:
Web Cross Platform
More cost effective for cross platform development Faster to market Easier to repurpose (e.g. for co-branding or white-labelling but this could easily change when iCloud comes in) Relies on less-costly less-specialist skills for implementation, (especially when using app builders such as phone gap and other drag and drop app builders which will i see as getting bigger)
Native Development
If you have the right budget, you get exactly what you want (if the OS permits it) Users will naturally see the kind of interface they expect Performance is likely to be better
The next few years we will continue to see Android and iOS dominating, but with Microsoft/Nokia becoming a major smartphone player, and Blackberry retaining a significant market share.
It is hard to say yet whether Web OS will really take off. Especially once apps start to interact with iCloud in more meaningful and integrated ways. But conversely HTML5 and the emergence of more powerful apps will allow web apps to make more use of tools currently used by native apps such as accelerometer and geo-location.
Most likely then we will be looking at a market with four or five major mobile OS platforms. With so many platforms in existence, I would say for any business or initiative that doesn’t have access to major budgets, but which requires reach across diverse audiences, cross-platform frameworks such as PhoneGap will prove an attractive development strategy.
Debugging mobile web is also seeing the emergence of tools based on existing web debugging tools such as socket bug https://github.com/manifestinteractive/socketbug/wiki which is based upon firebug. heres there own blurb about themselves “The technology behind Mobile Web Applications has been growing at a tremendous rate. Mobile Application Developers, while able to produce amazing applications, are limited by the native browsers own limited functionality. Basic features available on desktop browsers are completely absent from mobile browsers. The ability to view source code, debug javascript, or even execute a javascript command from a console are all tools developers have come to expect while developing websites. So why are these features lacking for mobile web application developers?
This is where Socketbug fills the gap! Socketbug is a Remote Debugging Utility built using Socket.IO. This means you can now use modern browsers ( both mobile and desktop ) to work together to allow you to remotely debug you mobile web applications.”
You can download our full report here
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