The more I think about apps on mobile devices the more I am reminded of the world before what is called Web 2.0.

To do anything meaningful on your computer during this pre-historic time you needed to download an application that ran natively in your operating system. Then Web 2.0 came along and sort of put a wrench into that thinking, you could now do things in your browser window that you never thought possible. Think of TuCows as the App store of 2000. If you wanted an application you went to TuCows to get it. I’d bet that since the web matured the amount of downloads on TuCows has dramatically decreased.

The mobile web is still young and you cannot accomplish nearly the same feats on Pocket Internet Explorer as you can in IE7 on your desktop. That will change, especially as more mobile browsers adopt HTML 5 and client-side database storage.

There are a plethora of mobile operating systems, each with their own SDK’s, challenges and obstacles to overcome when developing a native application for them. This leads to high costs and long development times as well as not being able to get your product in front of as many potential users as possible.

Look at the App store on your iPhone. The vast majority of the apps in there could be made to work in a browser and add HTML 5 on top of that and you don’t have to worry about connectivity issues. Even games can and will be made to work in the browser once Flash gets on the devices.

This is good for the mobile environment. This lowers the barriers to entry and also removes the gatekeepers like Apple who get to decide what is good for you and what isn’t.

Google hasn’t really developed any significant applications for the iPhone. Instead they are relying on developing mobile sites that make use of Safari. By doing this they can be assured that Gmail will work the same on both the iPhone and Android and they only made one application to do it, and that was a mobile site.