While the current industry focus is on applications, especially for smartphones such as the iPhone, Palm Pre and Gphone, I have always felt that accessing a truely global mass market can only be done through web applications accessed via the native handset browser. It seems that my views are also shared by Google.
Vic Gundotra, Google Engineering vice president and developer evangelist, said in an interview with the Financial Times, that "even Google was not rich enough to support all of the different mobile platforms from Apple’s AppStore to those of the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android and the many variations of the Nokia platform." Having personally spoken to a number of application developers, their challenge has always been balancing the cost of developing and supporting for each handset platform versus the potential market that the new version would bring.
His view is that web browser technology continues to evolve to allow capabilities previously only available through an application to be access by the web browser. For example, the iPhone Safari browser can now access its location information and the Google homepage uses this to indicate your location.
Besides the media hype associated with application development, the other attraction is the monetisation potential offered by the App stores. For mobile websites, the only realistic monetisation options are advertising or revenue share with operators who charge a subscription to access the site.
Right now, it is only the high traffic mobile sites that have any chance of generating a positive return from advertising despite the high click through rates being touted but the audience potential of a mobile website is orders or magnitude greater than any application.
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