Lots of things to consider in this debate. I'm an avid reader of Michael Mace's blog and I think he usually gets things spot on, but on this occasion I don't agree entirely. What kind of meaningless graph is that in his article, to start with?
It's slightly early to write off local applications on handheld devices, just by citing people who used to publish Palm applications. Jont, you're not going to like me for saying this, but who cares about Palm these days? Clearly Mace doesn't any more, and their market share and spread amongst users is really not significant, at least not here. PDA software in general is quite a niche business now, just as PDAs are dying out more and more. The innovation is in smartphones (and feature phones), and for those devices local applications still have a big part to play.
The disadvantages of local apps are clear:
- Distribution - Pushing out application downloads is hard, and operators cream off potential revenue (as mentioned)
- Mobile web sites are hence easier to access and promote. Although that isn't entirely true either, considering the recent problems with operator transcoding and filtering
- Huge device/technology fragmentation
- Resulting costs of development
The fragmentation issues has led many people (including me) to believe that true innovation can only happen at the server-side, ie the mobile user just needs a web browser on their device. That's simply because innovative stuff is so hampered by installed platforms like Java etc. BUT, if you believe that the current mobile web browsers can handle all that fancy stuff that would make a learning experience really rich, engaging and useful, you are fooling yourself too. Yes, the browsers are getting better, but the idea of 'one web' that is the same for desktop and mobile, is just as unrealistic at the moment as building a business model for selling Palm applications.
Some very experienced people in the mobile space have posted their own observations on this theme for a while now (like
Barbara Ballard,
David Beers,
Enrique Ortiz) and although you may say that they are mobile application developers, so they have a vested interest, they also work on mobile web products a lot.
As you point out, there is still massive scope for non-networked applications, and especially 'sometimes-connected' ones. As
Tom Hume says, deep integration with the device is not going to be possible with the browser (heck, it's not even possible with the desktop PC, that's why there are new things like Adobe AIR, Goggle Gears etc: to have offline capabilities as well as online) and in my opinion, to achieve exciting mobile learning/creating/collaborating, you will need that.
I take your point, Graham, about the 'rest of us' being empowered by using simpler technologies to build web-based learning and not being excluded by the hardcore developers. But the notion that they "don't want" the world of mobile opened up is rather odd - nobody actually likes writing JavaME, it's a nightmare. Maybe Android will provide a better platform and FlashLite is maturing too, so if someone offered a better solution to produce properly interactive learning on mobiles, I'd gladly take it. The mobile web doesn't do that at this stage at least.
Add to that the disastrously high and non-transparent cost of using the mobile web and its unreliability. When you haven't got a WiFi connection for your handheld device you are really at the mercy of the nasty operators...
I don't find myself agreeing with Donald Clark often, but I think one of his points is a good one. Despite the constraints it shouldn't be too difficult to produce simple, interactive and fun m-learning applications. But there aren't many around, are there?
Wolf.
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