I agree that HTML5 will be wonderful. It would be nice if we could always design for the future and ignore the present installed base and just expect people to upgrade. I still get pushback about killing IE6!

SA

I make a game of it, taking noticing the number of times, patrons whip out a phone to show me some call no.

So far, Iphone is leading

Blackberry users have been conditioned to believe surfing the web on a smartphone is an inconsistent and unpleasurable experience. iPhone OS and Android have creatively destroyed RIM’s monopoly of the smartphone market, and it’s hurting their bottom line. I’m surprised they hadn’t released a better browser sooner (though it isn’t even out yet).

Internet Explorer 6 was and is still with us (now in the sub-10% range) after 8 grueling years. With mobile browsers, hit percentages are already fairly low, and turnover lies somewhere around a 2-year contract term. It would be a painful waste to develop proprietary apps and sites when all major smartphone platforms will soon be using the same browser engine.

Since they are full-featured browsers, a mobile presence must either be additive and optional, or express the full feature set of a site. Otherwise, users would probably be more satisfied with the non-mobile version, which is both familiar in layout and has all the expected features and content.

Platform apps should only be used when features from device APIs not expressed in the browser are needed. Creating three or more platform apps in three different languages/environments is likely not worth the marketing effort, since one web app would usually suffice. The common contract player in the Enterprise will soon be on board with this.

Secondly – market share does not accurately reflect either web or app demand. Even though there are more blackberries out there, I’ve consistently heard webmasters say their analytics point to more iPhone/iPod Touch users hitting their sites than any other platform.