Smartphone apps - a thing of the past?

I have to admit, when I first started using my Apple iPhone I was caught by the “app craze” myself. Trying different apps on my phone became a social experience. It was not uncommon to see people passing their phones around at a restaurant to show off some new app. Coincidentally I was in the process of releasing my first custom-built application (www.munetrix.com) utilizing an “in the cloud” platform. It occurred to me, “why, when the rest of the software world is moving away from client-side installed software would the emerging Smartphone market embrace this fading methodology?”

To paraphrase the Buddhist maxim, When the student is ready the teacher appears—such was the case this time as well. A timely call from a Swedish colleague directed my attention to the first “in the cloud” content managements system (CMS) I had seen for Smartphones (www.Fourstream.com). Now I could develop a single web-based application, hosted on a content management server, and deliver that site to virtually any web-browsing Smartphone in the world. No longer did the user need to download and install a client-side app. No more browsing app exchanges. No more commissioning the development of client-side apps. Most importantly, no longer did the need exist to develop multiple versions of the same app just to meet the seemingly daily introduction of new Smartphone platforms. The CMS backend handled the integration of phone platforms for me.

Consider this quote from Google’s Eric Schmidt, “Mobile phones are cheaper then PCs, there are 3 times as many, growth is twice as high, more and more people have access.” The potential was mind boggling to me—so mind boggling that I signed up with Fourstream and am looking forward to pushing the limits of this cloud platform as I did with the less-mobile versions of web development solutions.