“A funny thing happened on the way to the mobile Web. Suddenly it’s no longer about the Web browser,” Brian Caulfield reports for Forbes. “Ironic, considering that the World Wide Web and the Web browser, created in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, is now eating desktop applications alive.”
Caulfield reports, “It has become easy to forget, however, that the Web and the Internet are two different things. A Web browser is just one of many ways the Internet can be put to use. And has reminded us of that by tearing off a small piece of the very big universe that is the Internet and creating a very different set of rules than those that apply to the Web. And lately it is that parallel world, rather than the Web, that has begun to matter most to the future of the mobile Internet.”
“That’s because Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs has done more than just slapping a Web browser on the iPhone–Apple has created a rich set of tools for delivering and monetizing content and services. Then it has paired them with rules that tear control away from the companies that have dominated the Web for so long,” Caulfield reports.
“The result: A newspaper publisher’s iPhone application could offer a better way to read its articles than the Web–or even print,” Caulfield reports. “Apple’s mobile devices show that tailored, Internet-connected applications can be better than what the Web can do on its own–whether it’s served up on a small screen or a big one.”
Full article here.
