Jul 18 2009
Is the Mobile Future in Apps or Browsers?
On a post entitled “App stores are not the future, says Google“, Chris Nuttall reported
App stores do not represent the future of the mobile industry according to Google’s vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra, who maintains consumers will instead turn to web browsers to fill their information and entertainment needs. Speaking Thursday at the Mobilebeat conference in San Francisco, Gundotra said no one, including Google, is rich enough to support all of the myriad mobile platforms in existence, a circumstance that mandates a shift in thinking away from the fragmented app store model.
“What we clearly see happening is a move to incredibly powerful browsers,” Gundotra said. “Many, many applications can be delivered through the browser and what that does for our costs is stunning. We believe the web has won and over the next several years, the browser, for economic reasons almost, will become the platform that matters and certainly that’s where Google is investing.” Gundotra added that Apple CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed “Build for the web” with the initial launch of the iPhone, a statement that met with resistance from developers: “I think Steve really did understand that, over the long term, it would be the web, and I think that’s how things will play out.”
There’s certainly merit in Gundotra’s arguments. However, we have to remember mobile bandwidth is still obscenely expensive, especially when you’re roaming. Also from the user’s perspective, their patience is relatively low while mobile and in need of information, and the latency on mobile is intrinsically long, regardless of the bandwidth.
Imagine an online dictionary in both website and app (local in the phone) formats. The iPhone Wordweb app is infinitely better than a beautiful dictionary server out on the web.
So, I’d draw a different conclusion. Unless mobile bandwidth become as cheap as the ADSL and roaming charges are bannished, there’s a very high probably that apps will beat the browsers. The pre-condition is very unlikely to change in the next 10 years.
We shall see in 5 years.
