Everyone thinks that Apple’s position is unassailable. But browser makers and the W3C have an opportunity to make a dent.

There are always discussions about mobile web vs translation layer (Appcelerator, PhoneGap) vs native apps. The reasons for staying away from mobile apps used to revolve around performance issues, as well as access to the phone’s subsystems. Used to.

Mobile devices are getting more powerful with each new generation. The A7 processor is amazing, and things are only getting faster. On the software side, the Javascript engines in the browsers have also improved a lot since people saw the first mobile web apps, and the tools for building these apps are evolving as well. This sets the stage for the performance issues to drop out of the picture.

Still though, those stubborn subsystems. If you need to access a contact list, take a picture/video, record audio, there’s no option but installing software onto the device.

This is where the W3C (and ECMA, the body governing Javascript) can come in and change things. They have an incentive to. The mobile web is changing. Web-based front ends are no longer the obvious first choice.

The W3C is becoming less relevant unless they release an updated spec for the mobile web that creates new APIs which pass through calls to the subsystems, enabling mobile-first experiences in a pure web environment. Browser makers would love this – they could each provide seamless payment systems across all devices, instead of letting Apple take their App Store cut. Engineering and product teams would love this – iOS apps take so long to publish, some companies are choosing to go Android first, and are able to release updates faster for Android. Enabling a mobile web experience in the browser lets them push features faster, and gain all the benefits of continuous innovation/deployment for iOS devices.

Folks who disagree with me will probably say that this is a security issue. Allowing web pages to access subsystems means that we’re going to have hackers stealing photos and contacts off devices. I’m not sure this would dissuade the W3C, because it implies that the native world doesn’t have these issues. It does. We had a few dust-ups last year of apps that were gathering data from handsets. Handling these advanced permissions is something that can be dealt with.

I’m not saying Cloudspace has an incentive either way. Apps need to be built, and we will continue to serve our customers, whether they need web or mobile interfaces (and is the core idea behind our thesis of Split Stack development).