An increasing number of basic but widely-used applications, including email clients, word processors and calendars are becoming available as web-based applications. In the future, Krisse asks will a smartphone need any on-board apps except the browser?
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Itsa nice idea, but the praticalities of getting cross platform support would make this a long way off. Formatting for the various mobile screens is hard enough with a properly programmed application, but trying to adapt for mobile devices without heading down the lowest common denominator route would make things near impossible right now. I'm sure we will see a shift towards web centric programming over the next few years but I wouldn't expect the current generation of Web 2.0 to manage this... Ajax and DB back ends do well enough but they're pretty clumsy in places.
Opera Mobile 9 will have support for widgets just like Opera Desktop, and improved ajax compability, so its a step in the direction focused in the article
It will happen to some degree, but apps will be hybrid apps instead of completly based on being connected online. This will have to happen for data security/integrity, storage, and cost reasons.
And then look for the carriers to only let you use their approved apps all the more. Gotta get that walled garden down first before browser based apps on mobile becomes viable.
How do you know they aren't reading it? How do you know they aren't selling your information to third parties? Can you move your data to a different computer without any data loss at all? What are you going to do when your storage provider starts to increase their tariffs? What if they just disappear?
The (mobile) Web 2.0 might work for read-only apps like google earth. For read-write, I doubt it.
I actually see things happening a little differently to this (although, in practice, the future may well end up being a combination of both). With the growing importance of home media, including stored video, video on demand and music, home computing looks like becoming ever more centralised. Microsoft have clearly anticipated this with the forthcoming release of Microsoft home server. This is a software only or software/hardware solution that allows one to very easily set up a home server to store all of your media files in one location and share them amongst a whole range of devices around the home. This could be a desktop PC in the study, a laptop in the kids room, an XBox 360 in the lounge and/or a Windows Mobile device anywhere you want.
In fact, with the pseudo fixed IP service offered with the product, you can access the content from anywhere with an internet connection (services obviously being dependant on the bandwidth availble with that connection. You can't watch a home video over a GPRS connection!). Which begins to sound rather like what Krisse describes but using a single machine at home, rather than on the Internet.
It doesn't take a huge leap in technology to see that same Home Server, in a few years time, hosting applications as services and allowing you to work on any document you wish or view any content you like as if you were at home. This could be with a laptop, a UMPC or any kind of smartphone device using a browser.
The Home Server, incidentally, can also backup all your machines around the house automatically, provide system recovery or rollback and act as a printer and ftp server. I've been on the beta program for the last month or so and it truly is amazing and already very stable. It's also 'plug 'n play' easy. I was up and running inside an hour and, with a hardware based solution (Home server pre-installed on a little HP server - supposedly available in 4 months) I could see an averagely competent home user being up and running with the basics inside 20 mins!
The obvious downside to this is "all your eggs in one basket" although, personally, I'd rather do that and take regular external backups than trust Google to look after all my data for me. Does anyone, for one moment, think google would fight your corner if the IRS asked it for a copy of all your personal data and correspondance?
"Storing your data on somebody else's computer is dangerous."
You're quite right. Which is why I wouldn't be surprised if you see products like Lotus's Domino and Notes combo and Microsoft's Exchange server incorporate there own simple web apps, (WebWord and WebExcel anyone!). Nobody is saying that the server has to be owned and run by Google. It would make a lot of companies happy if they could buy the server software and run it them selves.
Over the next few years (and it will take that long) I think you'll see the lines blur to invisibility - between online & offline, between phone & PC(/home server), between on web & on device. Frameworks (e.g. Adobe's Apollo) or standards will allow apps to become runtime-environment agnostic. The fact that you can view and interact with a website on a mobile browser is enabling this already in effect (regardless of what's allowing that to happen - e.g. opera mini in the middle or whatever). So that will become more the case.
The app will get input or produce output according to standards (e.g. text, or SVG or audio, or 3D graphics in OpenGL format) and the runtime-environment will handle that. May that's widgets on an OS, maybe that's a browser on an OS, maybe it's widgets on hardware, maybe it's an OS natively. Whatever. If there's a data connection and the user has allowed it, the app can talk to the internet, otherwise the runtime environment will auto-update later, or ask the app what it wants it to do.
My tuppence!
Alex
phonething.com
The rise of the thin client solution has been talked about for a long time now, the only thing holding it back up to now was the lack of speedy secure access IMO. With the roll out of faster processors on Mobile devices and more sophisticated communication technologies this hurdle is now starting to be overcome it's not going to happen over night but happen it will in my opinion. The fact that Microsoft are readying the launch of Mobile Word and Mobile Excel are IMO evidence of the direction things are heading although no Mobile Outlook yet although Yahoo offer an online calendar, contact and diary solution. I really do think it is not a question of if but only of when this becomes the norm IMO.
Marc
Microsoft have been mentioned a couple of times above. Currently I feel they will not have a significant future in mobile (significant relative to the size of the mobile market or relative to their success in the PC world) because of their fundamental mindset of seeing the mobile as a small PC (and to a lesser extent because their mobile products have a largely business focus). This mindset is a fatal fallacy. TV was not the radio with pictures it was thought it would be. Currently it is a fact MS do not truly understand what a mobile is or will be - that is clear as day from everything about their mobile products. The reason XBox 360 was a suprise success is fundamentally because it was not seen by it's creators and marketers as a PC for playing games.
Symbian are not perfect, but they at least have more or less of a clue what mobile is and where it is going.
Alex
phonething.com
Thought-provoking post! And I believe there are some grains of truth (though maybe not the whole truth)
I'll add two more important catches:
- Latency: mobile networks have longer latency than fixed ones. How long do you have patience to wait, say, for your contact book?
- Battery life: there are very real limitations of how much battery power you can cram into a mobile device. Battery life (energy efficiency, low power consumption, ...) will become increasingly critical factor for the competitiveness of a mobile device in the future. And an always-on connection will stay quite power-hungry...
krisse >> The latest S60 browser will apparently have AJAX compatibility
>> (although I still haven't seen the full version of Gmail running on
>> an S60 device yet).
Actually, Web Browser for S60, starting in 3rd Edition, does support Ajax -- it's the same engine as Safari. We're about to see some amazing new Web apps launched that are designed for the phone, and the performance is great. For example, the Ajax page's script can pre-fetch objects to make flipping through images speedy.
In the near future S60 will introduce ways to use local storage. Caching is a key principle for making a Web app behave well even when connectivity isn't perfect, and to hide latency.