moblf Blog

Guest post by Anikit Maheshwari, who is the CEO of Instablogs Network (www.instablogs.com)

Ironically one of the most used Mobile App is writing the script for demise of Mobile Native Apps ‘The mobile browser’. From Opera Mobile to iPhone Safari, Pocket IE to Symbian, browsers are getting more robust, and devices extremely powerful hence paving path for rich mobile web applications. All of sudden it’s starting to make more sense to build two to three different mobile web apps/sites covering almost all phones rather than doing hundreds of versions of mobile native apps to run on handful of phones.

I am not saying all Mobile Apps will be dead, but they will be becoming more like desktop apps. Native apps will be used only when they are actually needed, for e.g. a mobile photo editor, a PDF reader, etc. It’s like history is repeating itself. We have already witnessed the sharp decline in desktop apps and exponential rise in popularity of online apps. Today my most used application on my laptop is none other than Firefox browser. Most of the desktop applications I used once are replaced by online applications which are accessed by all latest browsers. I used Zoho for project management, Google Docs for online collaboration, Netvibes or Google Reader for reading feeds, Gtalk for keeping in touch with all my team members, Zinio to read my monthly magazines subscription, Google Domain Apps for email solutions, Jajah for net telephony. And now all of them have launched their mobile web versions as well. Most of the current phones are supporting JavaScript and mobile Ajax is already a buzzword, many mobile optimized open source Ajax libraries are available, which will facilitate more rich looking mobile web applications.

Mobile-optimized sites and apps are easy to distribute, faster to release, have low cost entry, and quick to share. The native mobile apps on the other hand are being crushed by near-monopoly of operators and handset companies and fragmented market. The greed and paranoia of carriers has hurt native mobile app industry a lot. Thanks to mobile phones and OS manufacturers, who ensured that carriers always had influence over third party developers.

Let’s consider it this way, when you decide to create a mobile web application. You don`t need a nod of approval from the carrier or manufacturer, no need to get certified, no need to share revenue with the vendor, no need to beg for placement on the deck, portability problem is solved by designing 2-3 different versions. You are free from carrier, handset manufacturer, OS vendor; it’s you and the users. With mobile billing solutions coming fast, billing the users on mobile won`t be a problem in coming days. Most of the serious users are switching to flat-rate data plans, and it will be a common norm in future.

One thing I am greatly thankful to Apple is that they have forced phone companies and OS vendors to build more powerful browsers, and ship them with new handsets. Some people might point out the release of iPhone SDK is itself an argument against this write-up of mine. But I doubt if SDK is nothing but an extension/ sandbox environment for Safari.

So I will finish this write-up with the dream of seeing operators and carries as nothing but delivery pipes, and more power to the developers, who have been treated like peasant farmers by the nasty Zamindars (feudal system) a.k.a. carriers.