Will iPhone Give Native Apps a New Life?
Smokescreen or not, Apple's iTunes App Store has captured a lot of imagination - - not to mention clicks and purchases. While there have been many complaints about the iPhone 2.0 rollout, and even the performance of the updated platform, so far there have been no major kvetches about the app store. And, while it's still early in the game, no game-breaking security meltdowns have resulted from all the new software going onto several million devices all at once.
Gertner suggests that tools for native application development, such as Microsoft's Visual Studio, continue to outpace tools for development of web-based applications. "As computing's center of gravity shifts away from general-purpose desktop machines to mobile devices, set-top boxes, game consoles and the like, are native apps poised to stage a comeback?," he asks.
One way to find an answer to that question is to keep eyes focused on Apple's next earnings announcement, a few months down the road.