Thursday, July 26, 2012

HTML5...Disrupting the App Market

In the sidelines of Apple posting a whopping revenue in the last quarter, the technology buzz in the industry is on HTML5 technology and it's wider implications to the app market. This is indeed good news for the Service Providers, who have been relegated to dumb pipe providers, with the whole app industry being dominated by the likes of Apple and Google, consisting the development software/platform, devices/hardware, the developer audience, and the Application/store front supply chain.

Device Manufacturers (Huawei, Intel, NEC, Samsung) and Operators  (Sprint, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Vodafone, SK Telecom and Telefonica) have teamed up with the stewardship of the LinuxFoundation, to create a robust and flexible platform for application developers called Tizen Association, using HTML5 and Wholesale Application Community (WAC). This portends well for the service provider industry, in order to consolidate it's position from a bit pipe provider to a 'Value Provider' on the pipe.

HTML5, with it's rich capability in working in the context of the client-server programming paradigm, and it's possibility of exploring the device features such as UI, accelerometer, contact list etc. in a device agnostic manner, presents a huge opportunity for the service provider. Further the service provider can expose it's network assets such as network derived location, call-control/signalling, billing etc. through  server side API exposition. This bodes well for the service provider market.

Crtainly 'Code once run anywhere' mitigates the stumbling block which is present in the native app arena, where there has to be multiple development cycles for creating native apps for iPhone and Android, in enterprise mobile development - and albeit with the same look and feel as the native app.

It will be interesting to see how fast service providers adopt to this platform, from the point of view of fostering and sustaining an eco system of developers/solution providers, device manufacturers, and storefronts. Would CSP's have a staid approach and create there own 'siloed' storefronts, or will they follow an open store front participatory model.

I see this has many opportunities, provided the CSP's takes it right. For an example in mission critical systems which are interconnected over the IP network (M2M), HTML5 could be the standard to interchange data and control/policing between two end points running on diverse systems, perhaps the end points being on a global IP network.