Getting in Gear for mobility

An interesting article on the Java Developers Journal at Sys-Con pointed to an announcement made in Australia by Google. Google Gears is targeted as an offline browser extension. The biggest impediment to the adoption of web apps is the ability to work offline. For anyone that spends time travelling by air this issue is well understood. Apollo - now renamed Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), is a step in the right direction. AIR's offline capabilities wowed the crowd at the Web 2.0 Expo. It appears that Adobe will support Google Gears in AIR.

The emergence of the mobile device as a driver of change on the Web is converging with the shift towards Web Apps. The next generation of smartphones will have to offer some innovative features to enable offline web apps and a usable interface for casual interaction with web-apps - online or offline.

If web developers gain access to a sophisticated toolkit that enables offline operation and simple syncing of content on reconnection then traditional desktop application developers should feel threatened - very threatened. On the other hand, developers of new applications face the tantalizing prospect of designing once for the web - only. Getting a slice of the action in the consumer, small business and enterprise markets becomes becomes an even higher stakes game. Business models are going to have to get more sophisticated with customers having the option of choosing from advertising supported through to software rental business models. Life is only going to get more interesting.

What are your thoughts on the development landscape for mobile and the evolution of offline web apps? Do you see a clear winner yet? How does Boxely and other AOL services fit in to this evolving landscape. Join the discussion - leave a comment below.