Let me start by clearly stating where I stand on this issue: I believe that the mobile web is the only long-term commercially viable content platform for mobile devices. I have four key reasons to support this belief: fragmentation, the Web, control, and consumer expectations.

First of all, we already know that mobile is a much larger playing field than desktop computing, but there is currently no economically feasible means to create native applications that can support the majority of the market. There isn’t just a handful of platforms to contend with or a clear market leader, but literally hundreds (when you include all the variations), with no one vendor able to firmly claim itself king. Getting your application on one platform is a snap, but getting it on two is a challenge, five a costly headache, and supporting fifty virtually impossible.

Anyone who’s betting against the Web right now is an idiot.
—Daniel Appelquist, Co-Chair W3C Mobile Web Initiative

The overall technology market is going to the Web. It is a highly vetted consumer medium that offers many pros and few cons. It is the only medium for information, applications, and services that has gone the distance for the last 15 years. With a new focus on advanced desktop web browser technology, which is poised to become more than just rendering text, the only native application that matters is the browser. The majority of digital innovation is occurring using the technologies of the Web, making the browser the central delivery mechanism for the applications and services of tomorrow. As more mobile browsers add services to detect location, acceleration, or use of the hardware, I predict that the need for native applications will be reduced to specific uses that really need the full capacity of the device, like games.

Mobile application distribution cannot and will likely never be under the control of the developer. In other words, mobile application vendors always have to rely on middlemen to get their products to market and take a slice of their profits. This has been the case since the beginning of downloadable mobile applications, when they were under the tight control of the operator.

These days, we see that control shifting to the device and platform makers, making getting applications to market easier. But do not be fooled—the model is exactly the same. The purpose of your product is only to service them, boosting their bottom line. The lack of control or even influence of your primary distribution channel puts your product at risk almost from the start. Your product can be shelved after just a few days in the spotlight.

Without control, this reason alone means that the funding of creating mobile applications will always remain a small, high-risk investment. Without the funding to help weather market fluctuations or the willingness to invest in the truly innovative products, developers will be forced to continue knocking out small, pointless applications aimed at short-term revenue gain—novelty products that wear off quickly.

My fourth belief is that consumers expect things to just work, and rightfully so. The challenge with native mobile applications is that the consumer may see an application that might look appealing to him, but if it isn’t supported for his particular device, then not only is the sale lost, but often the customer is lost for good. This is one of the reasons that operators usually require applications sold on their marketplace to support their top 10 to 15 devices.

From the consumer’s perspective, he spends good money on a device and wants content to support it. The lack of available content lowers the perceived value of the device. Consumers don’t care what device or platform they have; they just want to participate in the same content and services that their friends are using. Because cross-platform support is so challenging, that is hardly ever the possible.

You can see these traffic trends in just about all mobile marketplaces. Numerous visits occur when a consumer has purchased a brand-new device, but then visits drop off precipitately in just days. After the device is just a month old, the likelihood that the user will return for more content is slim to none.

The mobile web is the only platform that is available and works across all mobile devices, sharing the same set of standards and protocols with each other as well as the desktop web. The mobile web is also the only mobile distribution channel available to developers that they can control. It is the best way to bridge short, context-based mobile interactions with longer, desktop-based tasks.

The mobile web is the easiest platform to learn, the cheapest to produce, the most standardized, the most available, and the easiest to distribute. I call this the Ubiquity Principle: easier-to-produce quality content and services for the largest available market will always win.

The key word is “quality,” which the mobile web hasn’t had a lot of over the years. Although the mobile web has its own challenges with device fragmentation, the level of complexity to adapt to these challenges to produce the best possible experience is far lower than with native applications. In addition, these challenges are going away quickly and will be inconsequential in just a few years’ time.