Looking Ahead: HTML5
It’s coming and it opens up many possibilities for mobile Internet sites… 
Doing interesting things with a mobile device like using GPS, the camera, storing data locally, or working offline, has to date been one of the main differentiating factors separating browser-based and on-device apps (native or otherwise).
While Apps are what’s hot at the moment (which is why we’ve setup our own dedicated App development team!), it’s important to think about what’s on the horizon. From our vantage point, it looks like HTML5 is going to be a pretty disruptive technology.
Over the last couple of months, we’ve been looking at the standards and watching at a number of events where the technology has been previewed. At the recent Mobile Web Summit the power of HTML5’s features ‘wowed’ us as Google demonstrated Gmail and Google Maps running on the iPhone and Palm Pre within a browser application.
When implemented well, everything looks like an App: no browser furniture and launched from an icon. Everything also works like an App and was available when the phone was offline (in the case of Gmail, it even synced email that was stored locally!).
An additional and massive benefit over on device applications is that the Webapp can be installed via a URL, can check for updates when used (a la Java Webstart) and can be developed using web technologies like JavaScript (using skills that are not in short supply).
We’re always thinking about the next big technology that our customers will want to embrace, and we’ll be closely following as HTML5 evolves and – critically – is adopted by the smörgåsbord that is the mobile ecosystem.
Stay tuned for updates…
