Michael Mace, a former VP at Palm, recently proclaimed the death of the mobile application. His position is summarises thusly:

“The business of making native apps for mobile devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and restrictive business practices. The problems are so bad that the mobile web, despite its many technical drawbacks, is now a better way to deliver new functionality to mobiles. I think this will drive a rapid rise in mobile web development, largely replacing the mobile app business. This has huge implications for mobile operators, handset companies, developers, and users.”

Mace provides a history of the mobile application space as he sees it from his time with Palm. He describes the rush of developers to the Palm platform 10 years ago and how interest in the creation of native apps for the platform has waned. He also quotes a colleague who left the mobile app game because he couldn’t run a profitable business there.

Sorry, but it’s simplistic to assume that native mobile apps are now dead in favor of web mobile apps. Mobile is just seeing the same tension that we see on the desktop between native and web apps. On both mobile and desktop, neither is a clear winner and there are many working to increase the functionally of their application “stack”. Just this week, Adobe launched 1.0 of their AIR platform that further blurs the line on the desktop. It is catching the attention of desktop application developers and I would not be surprised if we see a mobile version of AIR sometime this year.

Does a developer care if their application web or native? I’d argue no, they care about what functionality their chosen framework provides. Look at what Opera is doing with their mobile browser. They are turning it into an application framework as much as a great browsing tool, even giving developers the ability to “widgetize” an app. If there’s something on your mobile that has the hooks you need to build an app, does it matter if the API’s come from a browser or from the operating system? As Webkit builds out it’s offline storage mechanism, your mobile web apps can run seamlessly alongside native apps even when on an airplane.

As the stack currently exists, native APIs for mobile allow access deeper into the device. This includes the ability to read and write to a user’s contacts, calendar, tasks, photos, videos, SMS, email, camera, GPS and voice. Web browsers lack this functionality. The richness of experience that these features provide provide a ‘wow’ that’s pretty tough to match in a browser.

Browser app or native app aside, the more important change that we are seeing is the opening of the mobile platform. In the article, the certification and requirement to work with carriers was noted as an unnecessary hurdle and I agree. Carriers have a history of stifling innovation in order to milk as much cash out of their pipes as possible.

Apple’s iPhone is an attempt to break that strangle hold by offering a device designed without carrier limitations. This week they release their SDK and if Apple does so with no limitations, then it will be successful. Developers should be able to create an app, upload it to the iTunes store and pick their desired monetization scheme. If Apple puts anything in the way of the interchange between users and developers, then the SDK will fail, just as Michael Mace predicts.

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