Instagram is a small company, two years old with only 13 people and had only 4 people a year ago.  What Instagram has is a very popular iPhone photo editing app with 30 million users.  Facebook noticed and bought Instagram for $1 billion.

Is this part of the app gold rush?  Or is this excess that marks the end of a boom?  How long can the native app craze go on?

The usual pattern is for a dominant technology company to grow and encompass, which sounds better than acquire and squash, more and more features and function of smaller players.  The leaders become bigger, but also provide more value to the end user.

It’s all happened before.

First with the invention of PCs and DOS, Microsoft added disk defragmentation, undelete, file caching and absorbed the innovation of a myriad of small utility providers.  Next with Windows, Microsoft found a dominant position being the provider of actual applications.  Word, Excel, PowerPoint, then Outlook become Office and most of the software you needed for your computer.

It took another innovation, from Netscape, to show browsers and the Internet as a new tech paradigm.  Microsoft blew them away by adding Internet Explorer to Windows, but personal computers became portals to the cloud where a new group of tech giants emerged.  First Yahoo, then Google, eBay, Amazon, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook all became great technology brands.

The mobile universe presents a more silo-like business, with Apple controlling the hardware AND software for its devices.  Google’s Android which runs on diverse hardware is more like the Microsoft model.  Most of the hot apps which are not included with the phone operating system are still portals to the cloud: Facebook, Twitter, eBay and Amazon apps.

In that sense, most hot apps are really just single-site browsers.  How long will companies pour money into making their own single-site native app?

They will pour in that money as long as the icon on the phone screen buys them traffic, it represents one touch to traffic for them.

However what if there was a pre-installed icon on your mobile device that was just represented a browser link?  That link would be the browser-equivalent of the single-site app.

Right now companies are pouring millions into native app development, but if mobile operators start offering — meaning selling — screen icons as links to websites, then the era of the native app could grind to a halt.  The money paid to native app developers will go to mobile carriers for a preinstall of a weblink as an icon.

Users will get their single-site apps as single-site links.  Just as Microsoft Windows plus Office became most of the software you needed for your personal computer, you’ll get preinstalled links to your favorite places on the web.  Your mobile device will come with most of what you need.  The market for native apps will remain, but shrink.  There will be more native apps, but their popularity will die.  It will take a new technological paradigm and path for another era of software to emerge, grow and thrive.

Native apps are dying.

The multipurpose web browser is an embedded virus that will supplant the single-site native app.

And that will be the death of native apps.

Intel is a big profitable company, but is being left behind by a major technology paradigm shift.

The future, and present, is mobile devices.  Intel has built its business on making fast processors faster.  Employing this approach meant all power consumption considerations were swept aside in the race for ever more speed.  However to most users, computers are “fast enough.”  Do you really need that hot new multi-core Pentium to run Word or Excel?  PC upgrade cycles have been lengthening.

Computing on the go

Carrying your computer with you has become the new job and life requirement.  Even before the iconic iPhone of 2007, people started using their mobile devices for text messaging and email on-the-run.  The explosion of form factors from smartphones, airbooks or ultrabooks to tablets of all sizes shows portability and connectivity are the prized features now.

Microsoft understand this trend and has tried to carve a new path with its Windows Phone line, so far with limited success, but since Nokia has bet its farm on Windows Phone it is still too early to tell how this will fully play out.  The crown jewels of Microsoft are its Office suite of software products: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook.   Microsoft isn’t taking any chances and is planning on a tablet version of Windows 8 this year.  Windows president Steven Sinofsky made it clear that x86 Windows apps won’t run on ARM Windows tablets.  You can read that quote here and here.

Windows 8 tablets will be ARM-based to take advantage of ARM’s superior power profile.  Battery life is the new megahertz.

Atom is too late

The mammoth Intel ship has been turned to try to meet this threat and to reduce its CPU power consumption.  Atom chips are starting to get reasonable, but especially in graphics their hunger for power lags far behind the power nibbling ARM chips.  So what can Intel do?

The Third Way

Intel is already an ARM licensee and manufactures some of their chips.  Why not support the ARM instruction set on an x86 chip?

Lest ye think this is heresy, there is precedence for this path.  TransMeta pioneered the concept of using a VLIW architecture chip to recompile, optimize and translate x86 opcodes at runtime into the CPU’s internal machine code.  They actually termed this technique “code morphing.”

Intel could take the same path and code morph ARM opcodes into x86.  Intel’s Itanium architecture is also VLIW.  ARM is a RISC style architecture with regular size instructions and could be mapped onto a VLIW word.  The challenge is to design a compiler or binary pre-processor that is intelligent enough to know how to build the very long instruction words.

Essentially this is just a translation step, best done with software compilers to translate binaries.  At this stage of VLSI life, the x86 instruction set is just one design mapped onto an internal, simpler CPU.  Why not also add the ARM instruction set and gain the ability to run ARM binaries?  ARM libraries that manipulate and push pixels in power friendly ways would be immediately available and Intel could go head-to-head with mobile big boys like Qualcomm and Texas Instruments in seeking mobile design wins.

How long would you push a shopping cart with a stuck wheel uphill?  That’s what Intel is doing with its Atom architecture.  Emulating ARM could revive their fortunes.  ARMulation can save Intel.

With the new year upon us, it’s a good time to make resolutions and try to look ahead.  Here’s my top ten predictions for 2012.

(1) More double-digit percent-of-workforce layoffs at Nokia and RIM.

A no-brainer here, both businesses are in decline due to the rise of iPhone and Android, so expect 10%-plus of workers at both places to be dismissed.

(2) RIM is acquired by either a private equity group or a carrier.

RIM’s decline has made it the subject of rampant takeover speculation.  The Canadian government is a bit in the way and this is usually not taken into consideration.  Either a private equity group will take over RIM to break up the pieces and part them out, or possibly more interestingly we could see a new kind of verticalization arrive in the mobile industry.

Imagine Verizon, or even Sprint – although they were really burned by buying NexTel – buying a handset maker and assuring that maker, in this case RIM, premium services and placement.  Carriers are in the process of becoming dumb bit pipes and are striving to differentiate some services.  Buying a handset maker, giving those handsets premium service for of course, a premium price, might not be a game changer, but it would be a way to fight the inevitable slide towards ever cheaper datarate prices.

(3) Apple kicks out Intel from its lower end laptops.

This is a move that would make Steve Jobs proud and one Tim Cook can call his own.  x86 processors are in a zombie-like state of deadness and ARM is the surging present.  The logical next step for Apple is to merge their mobile and laptop manufacturing processes by eliminating Intel CPUs from the laptop.  This gives Apple even more economies of scale, better power consumption numbers which they will tout to the heavens and puts more pressure on Intel pricing for the higher end desktop system CPUs.

Overlooked in the recent Anobit acquisition is how dependent on Samsung Apple is for flash memory.  Apple is taking the long view and buying insurance in case their lawsuits cause Samsung to retaliate on flash memory prices and deliveries.  Anobit is Apple taking flash memory internal and moving their laptops to ARM will further Apple’s acquisition of Intrinsity chip designers.

(4) Intel licenses ARM and starts mass manufacturing ARM CPUs.

x86 has had a great run, but it has lost in the marketplace.  All the growth is mobile and all the mobile is ARM.  This is one kind of diversification Intel is good at: hardware.  Forget any mobile-type software from this mammoth cubicle bureaucracy.

(5) Microsoft launches Windows 8 on tablets only.

Microsoft knows that mobile is threatening to eat their Office lunch, but so far Windows Phone 7 has not found a foothold.  It’s probably too late for another handheld phone operating system, although Windows Phone 7 has quite a nice user interface and has impressed the usual Microsoft critics.  Unfortunately for Redmond the mobile pony has left the barn, so I see efforts to push Windows into tablets redoubled with the vast checkbook they have.  By focusing Windows 8 on tablets the conversation will be changed.

(6) Google’s acquisition of Motorola achieves a patent armistice.

It won’t be Andy Rubin’s “patent peace”, but Google didn’t buy Motorola blindly and did due diligence to ensure Moto’s patents can provide Android protection.  There will still be skirmishes, but the major player lawsuits will calm down in 2012.  Steve Jobs will be rolled over in his grave.

(7) Nokia loses worldwide dominance of mobile devices to Samsung.

Already in the works, white-label devices will continue to eat away at Nokia’s low end offerings and even with some Windows Phone success at the high end, the competitive winds are too stiff.  Even the “middle” tier of yesterday’s smartphones-as-new-feature-phones is crumbling under the assault of cheaper Android phones and prediction number (8).

(8) Apple introduces a low priced iPhone for the rest of the world.

Take an iPhone 1, make it smaller, put fewer icons on the screen and Voila!  There’s a new iPhone for developing countries and a new path up the Apple product line.  Not to be overlooked by this offering is that its real intention is to slow the tide of Android devices and customers becoming accustomed to them.

(9) If Obama loses, Verizon will try to acquire Sprint

This is really more of a 2013 prediction, but if a Republican gets in the White House, then there will be further mobile consolidation.  The other way to word this prediction is prediction (9a).

(9a) There will be no major carrier consolidation in 2012.

The FCC torpedoing AT&T grabbing T-Mobile has frozen the playing field for now.

(10) Google will acquire Foursquare

A bit of a reach, but Google accurately senses its vulnerability to social networks and has failed with its current offerings.  Expect more energy, more Muppets and more everything put into Google+.  Facebook bought up Gowalla, but this was a talent buy and they’ve ditched the location-ness of Gowalla to part out their engineering team to Facebook Timeline.

Yelp has a better database than Foursquare, but they’ve already turned down Google.  The VCs backing Foursquare want out: either through IPO or acquisition.  Foursquare just isn’t generating the revenue needed for a decent IPO, so I expect them to be acquired.

Overall look for an incremental year of mobile fun.  I see lots of minor improvements, but no earth-shattering paradigm-smashing announcements.  There will be Google TV, but no one will care.  Well, maybe in 2013.

See you next year.

This is a big week for Nokia when they are expected to unveil their first new smartphones based on the Windows Phone operating system.

How well these smartphones are received could determine whether Nokia will even survive as a business.  Just last December Nokia had 28% of global smartphone sales and that share fell to 15% last month.  No doubt it is headed lower even if the new phones are a hit.  The question is whether there is a bottom and recovery based on market acceptance of a third smartphone alternative behind iPhone and Android.

Smartphone sales now account for half of all phone sales in North America and Europe and that amount is increasing as consumers increasingly enjoy the features, especially social networking features, that smartphones offer.

For what it’s worth Nokia was smart enough to realize its internal efforts were lacking in comparison to Apple and Google.  While CEO Stephen Elop toyed with adopting Android, he decided on a strategy of differentiation where Nokia phones will certainly not be considered “me too” devices.

While both iPhone and Android devices are grids of icons across the screen, the Windows Phone look and feel is more whitespace and typography, choosing text over graphics to convey information.  The big gamble is whether that different interface will appeal to consumers or not.

Microsoft does know how to deal with developers and there will be apps available for these phones.

Believing there is room for a third player and that Nokia does hardware well as Microsoft does software, technology research firm Gartner is projecting success with a 20% smartphone marketshare for Nokia by 2015.  That would be turning the ship around and recovery for Nokia.  Yet it’s just a prediction.

My own belief is that there is room for a third player because smartphones are just not that expensive and people will be happy to ditch what they have and try something new even just for the sake of trying something new.  The opportunity is there, the key is execution and Microsoft will deliver software and Nokia will deliver the hardware.

So I see “NokiaSoft” gaining a piece of the action, but not changing the game.  The two software frontrunners, Google and Apple, and the two hardware frontrunners, Apple and Samsung, are entrenched and going to keep on growing.

HTML5 is often touted as a web standard that can offer a convergent, write once-experience everywhere, with everywhere meaning desktop and laptop web browsers and mobile device browsers as well.  That last category has been the point of contention.  Can HTML5 elbow out native apps?  Put another way, can HTML5 produce as enjoyable a user experience as a native app?

What is HTML5?
When people speak of HTML5 they usually mean:

HTML5 = HTML5 + CSS 3 + JavaScript extensions

If we break that down, the HTML5 on the right side means new HTML structural elements like <nav>, <header>, <footer>, <aside> and <article>.  Cascading Style Sheets 3.0 is CSS 3 which is used to divorce style from content, thus increasing content versatility.  CSS 3 supports gradients (reducing reliance on images for visual design), shadows, text wrapping, multiple backgrounds, transitions and new ways to specify colors such as by hue, saturation and luminance.  Finally Javascript has been enhanced with new ideas such as a web storage API for any data associated with an application and a geolocation API to locate the exact position of a website visitor.  Web messaging, web workers and web sockets are other Javascript APIs that extend the browser programming environment in the direction of traditional operating system features.

Why do you want HTML5?
This depends who you are.  As a user, you just want a great experience, independent of platform or browser.  However the cost of developing that great experience across a variety of platforms has loomed large now that mobile devices have crashed the scene.  Mobile devices are fragmented across a variety of operating systems and programming environments.  Browsers on mobile devices are also fragmented, though there appears to be some convergence towards a widget called WebKit used as the main browser engine.

On a mobile device, the competition for experiencing a website is a native application or “app”.  Native apps have the downside of requiring deep platform-specific knowledge to be able to build one, however the upside is that native apps can exploit all the platform features and do so in the most efficient manner.  Due to the fragmentation of the mobile device marketplace, obtaining this deep platform knowledge is expensive since it must be done multiple times, so management would like to reduce development costs by adopting a more universal strategy that could work across a variety of mobile platforms.  Developers also would like to be able to write once, run everywhere, instead of having to attack a problem as a series of piecemeal efforts.

HTML5 enters that void with the promise of one standard to run on all devices.  Like all past efforts at cross-platform compatibility, there are some wins and some losses when you add up the tally.  For now, until there is better mobile browser support for HTML5, native apps rule the mobile roost.  But when there is better mobile browser support for HTML5, and there will be, can HTML5 elbow out native apps and get some eyeball time from users?

Hybrid Apps
That may already be happening.  Nomad Editions has adopted a strategy of selling its web magazine content as HTML5 on the web and also as a “hybrid app” on the iPad.  Hybrid apps are essentially the minimum-native-app-you-can-write wrapped around a WebKit browser widget populated with HTML5 content.  PhoneGap and Appcelerator Titanium are tools that produce these hybrid apps.  In fact Adobe DreamWeaver also now produces such an Android hybrid app for you automatically.

The fact that a publisher of content chose hybrid apps is telling.  As a publisher you can focus on the content, the HTML5 if you will, and either let a tool generate the mobile application (hybrid app) for you, or just repopulate an existing hybrid app with your new HTML5 content.  I suspect we’ll see many more hybrid apps for publishers of content.

Future
Native apps won’t be going away soon, not at the very least until there is an HTML5-capable WebKit widget widely deployed across a large swath of mobile devices.  In the meantime, I do expect to see the growth of hybrid apps for content publishers.  A publisher can use the same logic on their website and for a mobile phone or tablet application with the hybrid app model, thus minimizing their development and deployment costs.  In a sense, hybrid apps are the “foot in the door” for HTML5 to emerge as a dominant technology over the next decade.  Ten years from now we’ll probably look back and think universal acceptance of HTML5 was inevitable.  It’s much harder to see that prospectively, but not impossible.

The current debate over whether to develop a mobile native app or a web app for a mobile browser is the same old technology industry story.  Developers in the past debated the tradeoff of using a higher level programming language for portability (e.g. Pascal), or a lower level machine specific language (e.g. assembler code) for performance.  Capability versus compatibility has once again arisen and currently the capability argument is winning.

Advantage Native
Native apps have faster performance, better off-line mode support when not connected to the Internet and can utilize specific device characteristics, e.g. hardware features like a compass, camera and accelerometer.  These abilities give users a higher level of engagement with their device.  Also the centralized billing for purchasing apps in the iTunes Store and Google Market reduced the barrier to consume and adopt native apps, driving developer lust for dollars.

Advantage Web
Mobile operating systems are fragmenting while the mobile web is converging.  iOS and Android OS smartphones are on the rise, but RIM Blackberry OS is still a significant player and there is also Windows 7 Phone emerging.  Most developers don’t have the skills to program on all of these devices.  Deploying a native application is a set-piece battle on each platform using different toolsets, widget libraries and programming languages.  Even with the advantages that native apps have, the average iPhone user spends more time in the Safari browser than with native iPhone apps.

The Chrome Web Store launched by Google for their Chrome browser is an interesting experiment, but it is tiny compared to its Android cousin, both in number of apps and apps downloaded.  Many technology industry reporters feel that Chrome and its web app technology will just be folded into Android eventually.

Hybrid Apps
Mobile phone browsers are converging towards using the WebKit browser widget which is a layout engine that renders web pages.  WebKit is becoming a de facto standard for mobile phones, so if you target HTML and JavaScript for WebKit you’re most of the way to having a mobile app.  The missing piece is the browser and that’s the idea of hybrid apps.  Write the browser as a native app, using the WebKit widget, and supply your HTML and JavaScript as the application logic.  This can work surprisingly well.  PhoneGap is one hybrid app framework that takes this approach.  Appcelerator’s Titanium framework takes the translation one step further, actually converting your HTML and JavaScript into source code for iPhone or Android which you then compile with the native toolsets.

Trivergence
On the one hand mobile platforms are exploding with a myriad of operating systems.  On the other hand web standards are converging to HTML5, the language for content on the world wide web.  What does the future hold?  Native, web or hybrid?

My own opinion is the past is the future.  The convergence will not be to a single technology or a divergence to many-faceted proprietary systems.  I predict convergence to a troika of mobile phone operating systems: Apple iOS, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone 7.  The future will be native apps on these three platforms.  Consumer expectations of high quality device interaction demands a native app and these three platforms have the most important trait to set them apart from the rest: developers who love them.

Apple has set the standard for a loyal developer following, not unlike the personal computer era where some developers stayed on Apple and never touched Windows.  Most developers for personal computers flocked to Microsoft, who actually does make great developer tools like Visual Studio.  I predict the same .NET developers will flock to Microsoft’s calling for native apps.  Finally there was always a contingent of developers working for corporations at the server level who embraced Java.  These developers are the natural community for Android.

If this pattern of “trivergence” holds true it’s because developers hold more power in the creation of technology than generally acknowledged.  You do need someone to make the stuff after all, code is not written by machines, at least not yet.  Perhaps this is a hopeful thing, that the likes and biases of the people who make the technology actually drive the success of it.

I’ve never met a happy RIM developer.

There’s a great blog post on a wide-eyed RIM newbie trying to develop for the new RIM Playbook tablet.  In fact this post comes from someone in Canada near the RIM campus in Waterloo.  You can read it here.

As I noted in earlier reporting this seems to be a typical RIM development experience.

Thank you for confirmation enlightenment Jamie Murai.

350,000 apps in the iTunes Store and 200,000 in the Google Market show developers are building apps.  Who is paying for these apps?  Who is making money on these apps?

Businesses view apps as advertising and are paying to build them.  They are likely to hire contract developers.  iPhone and Android development is still a specialized skill.  IT outsourcing continues.  Of course to a developer, contracting is not scalable, has no assets and is a fragile business with income-replacement only.

With so many apps available, the era of the “crap app” is over.  Successful apps favor beauty over substance.  App beauty promotes word of mouth.  Social networking using sites like Facebook and Twitter can also create buzz around an app.  App review websites don’t have many page views.  Most people buy apps from seeing one on another person’s phone.

Having a website for your app is not that powerful, but visitors to that site are prepared to spend more money since they’re doing research.  A video and brochure is all you need on that site for a potential user to make a decision.

If you plan on giving your app away, but asking for money, choose your words carefully.  “Donate” is like pity, use the word “support”.  “Buy” is a nag.

As a developer the odds are pretty overwhelming you won’t make back the money that you invest in app development.  However as a consultant there is money on the table from the businesses looking to advertise through apps.

Search is the primary navigation point on the web.  If Google can’t find your web page, chances are no one else will.  But search is changing, social media has become a new way for people to find answers.  It’s not uncommon for someone to ask where to find a good plumber on Facebook or where to take their car for repair on Twitter.

Web SEO

On the web, Google is the new homepage.  To be found you have to use the three C’s of Search Engine Optimization:

• Content
• Code
• Credibility

Google’s search engine will rate you higher if there is actual content on your web page, though content may not be on your website if you post a video to YouTube.  If the code of your page uses W3C compliant CSS and avoids JavaScript, Ajax and Flash, then your page also rises in the rankings.  Finally what Google became famous for was scoring your page’s popularity based on inbound web links, so the more pages linking to your page the higher it’s credibility.

Mobile Search

Several trends seem to be emerging with search on mobile devices.  Mobile users don’t want to type, though they do love to touch a button on a screen to activate a search.  This implies a pre-selected decision tree aware of the context you want.

Examples of this form are the popular Urban Spoon and Yelp apps.  With Yelp you can type in the name of business, or select a category from a list:

• Restaurants
• Bars
• Coffee & Tea
• Drugstores
• Banks & Credit Unions
• Gas & Service Stations

From another touch you can further filter these choices by price, time (whether they are open now) and location (distance from you).

In general though, these phone apps are presenting you with results based on your location and that is one important trend in mobile search.  The ability to find context based on your physical location is new to search.  As a user you don’t have to enter your address, the location is sensed by GPS hardware or nearby WiFi router address or even cellphone tower triangulation.

This is the key to mobile search, the user not having to enter data.  What is emerging are context-specific apps with a baked-in decision tree where the user  touches a few selections, time and location are determined implicitly and results delivered.

Voice Search

Google includes Voice Search on Android where you can speak your search desires to your phone.  Like speaking to a magic oracle, saying the word “taco” can bring back results with nearby Mexican restaurants.  Again this search technique uses implicit location finding and also limits the amount of text a user has to enter, in fact eliminates all typing.

Social Mobile Search

Phone apps like Foursquare are pointing a direction where social search will head on mobile devices.  With Foursquare you can see locations your friends have most recently visited.  If you touch the name of that location you see details about the place.

Foursquare has also added the notion of a “ping” where you are notified when one of your friends checks into a place.  In a sense you are now keeping track of where your friends announce they are and receiving a notification on your phone.

Future Mobile Search

Location seems to be the area where mobile devices are still experimenting with new techniques.  The Foursquare idea of sending you pings when your friends announce themselves at a location is probably not interesting to you if you are very far away from them, say when you are traveling.   However if you received a ping from a place as you approached it, that might be more interesting.

Geoloqi has a feature called Geonotes that are essentially this idea of a ping from a place as you near it.  I’m not sure how often people will want to be interrupted on their phone by things that are not phone calls, but I suspect there will be similar application filters that allow you to subscribe to location pings or geonotes based on what you’re interested in.  For instance you might only be interested in finding an Italian restaurant as you head in one direction, or a library as you head in another.  The future will allow you to wander and only interrupt you when there’s something interesting to you nearby.