Monday, July 20th, 2009
The End of the App Store?
Is the world of the App store ending? Google seems to think so. Its no surprise that the whole concept ‘Mobile Apps’ was capitalized by Apple, but is Google just bitter, or are they on to something?
Last week, Vic Gundotra (Google’s VP of Engineering) claimed that the way of native apps are fading fast, and web based apps are the future. This could be simply because Google’s new Chrome OS for their Netbook is all Web based, but he could also be on to something.
Now, there are the arguments that the reasoning behind native apps lies in their ability to utilize the device’s processing power, which is a great argument, but it also limits the apps ability to dynamically evolved. Checking for updates can be annoying at times, and from a development standpoint, anytime you need to make a change to your application, you need to resubmit your fix (and in Apple’s case, you wait weeks for it to then go live). Web based apps, as great as they all sound, also have inherent issues. What if I’m mid flight? What if I’m in the middle of the lake, fishing? What if I’m in my old stucco/plaster walled apartment in St. Paul where even making a PHONE CALL was a challenge? The ability to dynamically update/change content is a huge key for Mobile Apps going forward, but where is the middle ground between processing power and content flexibility. Hybrid apps are becoming more and more frequent, and for all the right reasons. Building a shell for the native system that can store content and render local operations more efficiently, while pulling content from the web, makes for a perfect marriage between both worlds. The native shell means less of an application to manage/memory hog/bug fix, while the web based content means more frequent content updates and significant flexibility as the app goes forward, and if the app includes functionality to cache web based content and only refresh when new content is found, there’s no reason one couldn’t pull up whatever they were last using wherever they are, data signal or not.
It’ll be interesting to watch where this all heads, as the operating system wars wage on. We now have approximately 4 app stores and all seems to be following one another. Will Google be right and take the lead going forward? Or is Apple already secretly all over it and will launch their web-based platform with the next round of iPhones (or Apple Tablets… c’mon, you all know they’re coming soon)? I guess we’ll find out soon.
Great little article on the Google side of things over at Wired: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/google-app-store
