Mobile HTML5 To Replace Mobile Apps?

[jyl]

Interesting article.

The App-ocalypse: Can Web standards make mobile apps obsolete? | Ars Technica

The TL-DR version:
- Smartphone app developers' focus on the largest mobile OS (Android, iOS) make it impossible for small/new mobile OS'es to compete (Windows, Blackberry, etc).
- HTML5 could allow applications to be delivered via the mobile web browser instead of via apps, if new standards/APIs are adopted.
- Apple stands to lose if that happens, Google might gain, others could gain.

What do you think? Mobile computing has developed differently from PC computing, in the latter applications are moving to the web, in the latter standalone apps dominate.

My quick reactions
- To replace apps, webpages would need access to/control of the smartphone - data, resources, camera/mic/other hardware.
- Webpages can't be funneled through an app store that limits the webpage's actions and blocks malicious webpages
- I am pretty comfortable installing an app from the Apple app store, I would never install one from some independent app store (that's where you get Chinese spyware), webpages seem even worse.

[stomachmonkey]

Would be coming full circle.

All the original 3rd party iOS apps were really just bookmarks to web applications.

I'm with you, I prefer standalone apps.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Another "pro" for apps is that many / most of them run on your device regardless of whether or not you're Internet connected at that particular moment. A few require a connection but most simply run once they're downloaded and installed. With HTML5 you would almost always have to be Internet connected at that particular moment (and if you lose your connection, you're screwed unless the software is very carefully written - most isn't).

It has some merits but I see it as a step towards what Bill Gates used to call "dumb boxes" and away from stuff on your own device / platform. I'm not sure most people really want all their stuff in the cloud. I know I certainly don't. Some stuff sure, but not all my software, data, etc. I'm pretty selective about what I allow off into the aether of the Internet and what I keep on my own devices offline.

[id10t]

Not sure why my bank, college, or favorite website needs storage on my phone to access what I should be able to get via browser. Only app I've installed on my phone has been a file manager, so I can add music to my iphone from my linux machines (no windows, no macs, no itunes). Games and such I guess I can understand, but for things that you do from a desktop via web why the hell do I need an app?

[jyl]

This has to do with apps that use phone functions like GPS, WiFi location, accelerometer, camera, photos, speaker, mic, storage, etc. Think navigation, games, photography, exercise, etc apps.

[cstreit]

It's probably not going to be HTML5 that replaces apps. I don't think there is enough control over what runs server-side. IN order for apps to access the local mobile device functions and operate without a connection there probably needs to be a better client side element.

Perhaps all the market needs is a development platform that better supports this, that is, offline execution. This issue I have with apps is that they are the "client server" architecture of 15 years ago in a way.