Interactive by Nature

My Thoughts On “App Internet”

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

A little disclaimer before reading this post. I recently attended the Breaking Development Conference which focuses on Web Design and Development for Mobile Devices. I’m so fired up about mobile web, that I might come off a little bias here.

In August, 2010, Forrester coined the term “App Internet“. What does the App Internet mean? “The Web, as the dominant software architecture of the Internet, is dead.” But, since then we have only seen the mobile web progress with the help of HTML5, APIs and mobile web frameworks like jQuery Mobile, Sencha and jQ Touch. In my opinion, it seems that the “mobile app fad” is dwindling down due to progressive web enhancements making mobile web more accessible across multiple platforms and older browser/device versions.

At a high level, the problem with native apps is that they must be downloaded to your device, and it’s becoming too much trouble to organize and maintain ALL the apps and scroll, scroll, scroll all the way down to find the one you’re looking for. Sure, you could keep adding them to your home screen, but where does it end? It’s not realistic to have an app for every store you buy from or every website you visit.

As mobile web improves, users will be more likely to take advantage of the idea of “use it and lose it”. Meaning, they don’t need to go through the pain of finding and downloading an app when they can open a browser based web app, use it, and move on.

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Posted in Code, Development, jQuery, Mobile | 3 Comments »