In 5 years we’ll all be looking at the dedicated application stores of today and laugh at how fucking stupid we once were. The only reason developers care about app stores, the ONLY reason, is the ability to monetize their applications. Once operators make a billing element which taps into the SIM card that can be embedded via HTML then you’ll see web services, and web applications, take off. In the video below Arun Ranganathan shows us the SVG and Canvas features of HTML5 being shown off on the Nokia N900. It’s crude, I’ll admit, but it shows the direction in which we’re heading. Combine what you see here with hardware accelerated webGL and you’re going to see mobile web applications soon rival what is out there today. The release candidate version of Firefox Mobile for the N900 is due out by the end of this year and a final version will be released in 2010. Firefox Mobile is also being planned for Windows Mobile and Android devices.
[Via: Missmobile’s Blog]