While I typically agree with those who find Business Week to be a great contrarian indicator (get lauded on the cover, watch your your stock go down), this article on the impact of applications on iPhone and the Google Phone OS gets it.
Basically, software developers don’t like to develop for mobile because the phone industry is too greedy and too fragmented. Every carriers wants their own piece of the pie, a big one, and they want the apps customized so they only work in their network. In my own experience working for a web-based email provider we found that the telecoms we sold private label versions to would only pay a few cents per user. For the average developer this simply isn’t worth the hassle.
Now, with an SDK (software development kit) coming for iPhone and the rumored Google phone operating system, we’ll have environments on phones to run apps that are not associated with the networks. This will re-engage those software developers who walked away from phone apps. The key to this, as anyone who reads this blog knows I am obsessed about, is the full browser on the phone.
Bye bye .mobi.
Hello web 3.0 on a mobile device.
And cheers for not requiring a laptop just to check my mail and the web while traveling… Next year everything changes again.