"We need to champion the browser"
Woww – yes, that’s three times “w”, my awesomely funny way of slipping “world wide web” into the coverage from Las Vegas. At the Verizon Developers Conference this week, the mobile web was the most intriguingly persistent theme of the last two days. Although all the graphics around the event spoke to powering your app, in fact the common denominator for all business models is web-based.
Anyway, according to the Verizon folks wandering around the expansive glasshouse of the Aria Hotel and Resort, we need to champion the browser. This company has 92 million subscribers, who are becoming more diverse in their choice of device, connection method, app preferences and so forth each month. Trying to support that amount diversity with an app is not going to deliver the economic return for the majority of developers, they said.
This is a real call-to-action from the company that, as little as 5 years ago, was quite impenetrable for the majority of developers. This – the second annual Developers Conference – had a confident feel about it from Verizon, and the top-level “open” message of two years ago is feeding through the ranks. The busiest track at the conference was the mobile web track, so the message is playing back strongly to the VZW team here.
It would be a turnaround, a wonder and a potent force in the market if Verizon Wireless really does back the browser as the way forward. Oh, and the exec from CelluFun just said “forget PSMS, it doesn’t perform, standardize on WAP billing”. Didn’t Bango say that 10 years ago? As I say, it’s finally feeding through the ranks……
