As someone who develops mobile apps for a living targeted at industrial markets, I would amend that headline to read:<p>"Mobile Consumer Applications, RIP". I'm sure the authors comments are spot-on in the general consumer market (which seems to be his area of expertise), but the custom, industrial mobile app market is alive and well. Admittedly, most of the companies involved are large beasts and move slowly, so I'm still developing for Embedded DOS and older Windows CE versions, but the market is quite healthy.
What the hell was the point of those charts? I couldn't make this up... he said, "Here's a chart to help explain the situation," then he showed two graphs with no figures on them whatsoever based on data that he pulled out of his ass. Then he spent two paragraphs talking about these charts. He could have just as easily related the same idea without showing pseudocharts.<p>That gripe aside, the article was quite solid, but it failed to mention the business implications. If a mobile provider was smart enough to open up its devices, create an API for developers, and allow that API to be used for free by any device manufacturer, that provider would see an influx of new devices, app developers, and customers. Other providers, wanting to enable these applications on their network (and maintain their customers) would be forced to open their devices as well, devices with the same API layer. Problem solved; mobile apps everywhere.<p>Instead, in the US at least, providers continue to try to lock every customer into a two-year contract to keep them from leaving, instead of relying on their quality of service.
Hm. It seems like the mobile space is following the same path as the PC space. Phones (like PC's) are tending more towards thin client status. As soon as Android and Webkit are up to snuff with rich web apps, we will be seeing mobile phones in a whole new light.
This is my biggest fear with Hecl. Hecl makes mobile apps easier, putting them within reach of people who aren't Java whizzes, but the web makes it easier still.<p>However... people are still worried about connection charges, and phones <i>are</i> getting more capable, to the point where you can do some fairly interesting things on them, like with Android.