Why is HTML5 gaining popularity in the mobile industry?

Many of you may know about HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), it’s the programming language that’s used to build websites. It basically provides a base for web design and integrates with other languages such as CSS, JavaScript, XML, Flash, Perl and many others to create the many websites you know and love. In that sense, HTML5 is the fifth revision of the HTML standard. The upgrade adds many features and improvements such as speed, animations and HD video playback among many others. So now you must be thinking, if it’s a web designing standard, why have you been hearing so much about it in the mobile industry? Well the answer is simple, one of the biggest advantages of HTML5 is that it allows you to create web apps (a combination of animations, vector graphics, video and other features with an ordinary html layout to allow apps to be created within browsers). Would you like an example, take a look at Facebook or twitter’s website from within your mobile’s browser, that is a web app. Web apps started gaining popularity when iOS had the feature to bookmark a page directly to your home screen, although those weren’t necessarily web apps, they paved the way for engineers to get interested in web apps. However a pivotal moment for web apps came in late 2011 and early 2012, Microsoft announced that applications built for the windows 8 and windows phone store could be based on HTML5. A little later on, RIM announced that blackberry 10 would feature full HTML 5 integration for app development and so the trend continued. Before too long Mozilla announced that Firefox OS would be entirely html 5 based and Canonical announced that Ubuntu and more recently Ubuntu Phone would feature web app integration directly into the operating system.

Now there are disadvantages to web apps and HTML 5, such as the fact that web apps are noticeably slower than native apps and lack the performance since they can’t take full advantage of the phone’s processing power. But from a developer’s standpoint, there are many reasons why developing an app in HTML5 can be a huge advantage. HTML is a relatively easy language to learn, I can tell you this from experience. Not much time or effort goes into learning HTML and most programmers out there probably started off learning HTML. So it’s already widely accepted. HTML is platform independent, it works on mostly all platforms under the sun, such as this means that developers can use the same code to develop apps for Ubuntu and Firefox OS. They don’t have to learn another language to make their app available on another platform. This is the main problem you see today, this is the reason many of your favourite iOS apps don’t come to android and vice versa, it’s because they’re platform dependant. So by using HTML5, it’s less of a hassle for developers to create apps for different platforms. By being able to develop easily for all the different platforms, developers can reach a much wider target audience and user base, as more people will have access to their application. The higher the user base, the higher the market share and market growth and the higher the market share the higher the scope for profits. That settles the reason people sell their apps in the first place, to make profits! Even if it’s a free app, they use advertisements to generate revenue. There’s a popular saying in the Silicon Valley, “If you’re not paying for the service, you probably are the service”. HTML 5 can also prove to be an advantage in the long run and for consumer satisfaction because updates can be pushed out much easier and automatically, no need to wait for it to be authorized by the “App Store” and no need for users to go and manually download the update. Everything is done automatically.

There are many other minor advantages to using HTML 5 such as the easy access to data on other web pages, etc. however the main benefits have already been highlighted. So what do you think? Do you feel HTML 5 is the future of mobile app development or is it just a passing phase? Feel free to sound of in the comments below and till next time folks,

Stay Snazzy!




About Soham Adwani

Technology Enthusiast, Film and TV Lover, Photographer and Professional Beard Grower More on Google+ Google

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