Paul Kedrosky on the under-appreciation of mobile web platforms:

People just don’t get how good web apps on mobile can be. I get stuck in many conversations about native apps on mobile, which always strikes me as vestigial. The same way that I live in mostly browser-based apps on my desktop and laptop, I am convinced I will live in web apps on my mobile device. Pretending otherwise seems wrong-headed and self-defeating.
 

At MobileCamp Vancouver I pushed just this point on the industry panel. I’m not sure the other telco folks on the panel were convinced. But – what I found after the panel among the broader development community there, was intense interest in targeting mobiles through web-based runtimes – be they web sites, widgets, Adobe AIR, Google gears, etc.

There are really two issues to consider here.

1. Are web runtimes capable of delivering the necessary functionality and experience equal to native runtimes? The answer is yes although not everybody gets this yet. See my post on Adobe AIR / Google gears like platform for iPhone for an argument in favor of mobile runtimes over native runtimes.   
2. Recognition of another under-appreciated benefit of mobile web runtimes – they drastically expand the world of people that can develop mobile applications. In this sense web runtimes are poised to play a role similar to that played by Visual Basic for desktop apps in the 90′s. To be clear – I am not comparing the two in technical terms, but in terms of “developer reach”. Undeniably (and to many developers’ deep regret) VB drove a huge developer population.

This past weekend Vancouver had its very own MobileCampVancouver event organized by the Handi Mobility team.

I was on the mobile industry panel with Dennis Knothe of Nokia, Harmander Gill of Wavefront, Dr. Richard Smith of SFU, and Jim Udall of QuickMobile.

Jim and I ended up debating very different views on the future of mobile web platforms, making for a spirited discussion. The ultra short version – I was very bullish on mobile web technologies to expand the mobile developer base, Jim saw mobile web tech as over-hyped and that existing platforms (SMS / MMS / J2ME / Symbian) will rule at the expense of web technologies. Proof that reasonable people can differ even on fundamental issues.

As is always the case, the time allotted was very short – Jim, I hope we can continue the discussion another time!

Jeff

Last week I was at the EmTech conference at MIT to be recognized among this year’s TR35 recipients. I had the pleasure of meeting a number of recipients doing truly amazing work in a variety of fields – biofuels was a particular hotspot this year.

Overall: Fantastic sessions, good connection value, very poor exhibitors.

Conference highlights: Charles Simonyi’s session with big claims for progress on the fundamental bottleneck in software engineering, Ann Winblad’s fireside chat with Jason Pontin, and a pair of great panels by TR35 recipients in the synthietic biology and biofuels area.

Ann Winblad was fantastic. Enough to make an entrepreneur love VCs, not just their money (I kid, I kid). Very smart, very insightful. Watch the video, it’s worth it.

Despite the overall poor exhibitors in the showcase part of the conference, the highlight was MIT Sloan MBA student Eric Silverberg’s Numberpedia.org. The idea is to aggregate openly available statistics on everything under the sun (but most interestingly market data). Could be quite useful if executed well.

Jeff
Chief Software Architect, EQO