Anticipate The Future Of Mobile Web Development1. Anticipate The Future Of Mobile Web Development
As mobile continues to be a major focus in all facets of business, developers face a
multitude of challenges in implementing a successful strategy for it — integration,
experience, standards and technology usage. But what if I told you that these
challenges are inherently the same challenges that the developer community faced 15
years ago during the advent of the World Wide Web?
Operating under the assumption that mobile today is where the Web was in 1999 —
not just from a boom and hype perspective but also from an application development
perspective — what can the web’s evolution teach us about the future of mobile? And
how can developers address these challenges?
Big System Integrations
Similar to today’s mobile innovators, B2C companies such as retailers took the lead in
web innovation ahead of B2B enterprises who were slower to adopt. However, as they
so often do, enterprises may have taken longer to adjust, develop, implement and of
course, make the internal adjustments that would allow for a web presence, and B2B
not only caught up but surpassed the B2C markets.
Fifteen years ago, these businesses addressed the integration issues by incorporating
technologies such as Enterprise Service Buses to bring together the Java or C++ back
end with HTMLbased front ends. Today, developers are doing this in the cloud – with
mobile backend services (MBaaS). This technology enables developers to plug in to
2. large enterprise systems such as SAP or Oracle at a single point of entry that can then
work with the multitude of devices in the market today.
Standards | Platforms | Preferences
Of course, the question of industry standards has been around since before that of
mobile or even the web. However, in the early days of web development, many turf
wars raged — Windows or Web, IE or Netscape, pure HTML or proprietary JavaScript;
stay within AOL’s walled garden or branch out to the worlds of Internet Explorer or
Netscape?
Again, these turf wars are alive and well due to the plethora of devices available today.
Do we go native, web, or hybrid? Do we develop for iOS and Apple’s walled garden, or
Android or both? What about Windows Phones or the emerging new mobile webbased
phones like Mozilla’s FireFoxOS? While standards bodies are working to come
together, just like with the Web, it is unlikely we will ever see a single standard for
mobile development. Rather, developers will exercise the web standards currently in
place and will use technology that provides a “best of” scenario.
Proper Planning and Skillsets
As was the case back in the ’90s, enterprise developers struggled to transition their
desktop skillsets to that of web development. Change is difficult, as is learning new
programming languages and deployment environments. This same class of developers,
who either migrated their skillsets to the Web or moved on to greener pastures are
once again faced with a monumental shift. Many are very comfortable building web
applications but are now forced to go mobile and need to acquire skills for mobile
development.