"Apps" (mobile applications based on specific hardware platforms) have become a booming economy, making millionaires out of guys who like fart sounds and expanding the minds of mobile phone users. Apple's App Store has 50 million users, 400,000 apps and 10 billion downloads.
All of it is coming to an end.
The real threat are web apps. The kind that will download to your device the moment you open then, allowing you offline access, whether they're news, games, email or some other utility. If you don't believe they'll work — and eliminate dependencies on plugins outside of open web standards, like flash — go download a free copy of Angry Birds for Google Chrome and try disconnecting from your local network. Magic!
Steve Jobs thought web apps were the future too, in 2008 when he announced that the iPhone would have plenty of apps — all of them available through the browser. As is often the case with Jobs, he was just a little too far ahead of the curve (think of the Newton, his first attempt to create an iPhone-like device) which led him to later reverse himself and create a native app store anyway.
Here's how Brian Kennish, formerly an engineer at Google and now something of a punk-rock privacy-protecting developer, put it in a recent email:
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free"One word: distribution. There are 2 billion web users versus 50 million iOS users."
No need to ditch all of your apps today, nor bemoan the dollars you've already sent to Android or iOS developers. Just look to the horizon, and see which way the wind is blowing.
[Source: MIT's Technology Review]