Mobile Downloads vs. Mobile Widgets

Following Newsweek’s prediction that 2007 will be the year of the Widget, Third Screen reported that Mobile Widgets will likely fix the broken experiences of the Mobile Web.  I agree.  Today, most rich mobile apps must be downloaded, each has a MRC which leads to over inflated monthly bills, and apps are hard to discover among the hundreds of mobile apps on or off the deck directory.  There are hundreds if not thousands of possibilities for location-enhanced apps, but the download model (akin to the desktop software model in the PC world) doesn’t scale to support the niches.  I think the Widget approach to mobile application development removes these existing barriers for mainstream discovery and usage, while supporting the emerging personalization of the mobile Web. 

This entry was contributed by Jonathan Spinney