Software Everywhere — David Beers on Mobile Computing

Mike Mace has written a piece titled Mobile Applications, RIP that seems far wide of the mark to me. He says that user-installed "native" mobile applications (as distinguished from web applications) have been so crushed by platform fragmentation and restrictive carrier certification requirements that the only remaining platform with a viable business model for mobile is the web.

Must be a Silicon Valley thing, because that's sure not been my experience. Nor it seems has it been Barbara Ballard's over at Little Springs Design, which has its foot in both the Java app and web app markets. She wrote recently:

This quarter is not particularly different from other quarters: we get far more work designing applications than designing web sites.

She goes on to explain why browser applications still aren't cutting it for her customers:

• Because they need to store some of their application logic and/or data locally
• Because the app or data needs to be available without the network
• Because the application would be dreadfully slow as a web app
• Because they are creating a push messaging client that needs more rich interaction than simple SMS (and better interoperability than MMS)

I don't think Barbara or I disagree with Mike about the challenges of fragmentation and certification, but I see things finally starting to get exciting for mobile developers, not dying out. Seems to me that all the really great new opportunities in mobile software involve applications that need access to the native hardware:

• LBS is finally taking off. (This is where I work these days and I get calls and emails asking for GPS apps all the time.)
• Mobile payments look poised to break out of Asia and into North America
• Companies are rushing to use QR codes to build the "Internet of Things", for which your mobile will be the mouse you "click" to gain access.
• Three words that make the above two items even more interesting: near-field radios.
• Multimodal user interfaces are finally looking ready for prime-time, so people can mix voice and button-clicks to create, search, and interact with their personal data and data in the cloud
• Best of all, mass market mobile phone users are starting to "get" the idea that their mobiles really can run applications and they're installing them to stay connected with their favorite social networks

Fragmentation is certainly not a reason for developers to retreat to the browser. The mobile web is incredibly fragmented, whereas Java ME fragmentation has been significantly reduced. And Java is looking like the new lingua franca of smartphones, too: RIM, Danger, Motorola, Google, and (rumor has it) Palm have all opted to make advanced (i.e. beyond MIDP) Java runtimes their primary smartphone application frameworks. A well-written Java ME application aimed at mass market feature phones is pretty easy to port to more advanced Java environments. The definition of "well-written Java ME application" will be a developer topic that I address very soon.

The carrier barrier does indeed make things tough—especially for "Long Tail" applications that address small niches. But we shouldn't forget that the carriers control the browser just as much as they do any other free-standing app. We know they are more than willing to control what parts of the web you can access without paying them a "toll." The only thing that's making web applications freer from carrier control right now for users who do pay that toll is that these apps aren't (yet) threatening any revenue streams or generating revenue from which the carriers can extract their pound of flesh.

Fortunately, as I watch the carriers struggle for ways to reduce subscriber churn and see widening cracks in the walls around their gardens, I'm more confident than ever that they will not be able to keep the forces arrayed against them out. That topic will have to wait for future posts. Suffice it to say for now that from where I stand there seems to be more good work for mobile developers today than ever. And I'm not talking about mobile web developers.