A few interesting things happened in the past 2 weeks:

• - Andressen was interviewed at D9 by Walt and Kara - http://bit.ly/k2FN80
• - Apple relented on their in-app subscription model - http://huff.to/iSA6GJ
• - Financial Time chose not to have an app for the iPad -http://bit.ly/jnAUdV

All have a common theme. The Mobile Web or Webapps.

Research has shown that the average number of apps on a smartphone range from between 25(Android) to 40 (iPhone) - see Nielsen study http://bit.ly/ckRvLU. (OR you can believe this story http://bit.ly/hBoPnn which has a better tracking mechanism, but is based on 25% of the Nielsen sample). After that, a person reaches AppSaturation.  The rate of app downloads decreases, every new app is measured against the apps currently on the device and some old unused apps get deleted to make way for new apps.

At the D9 conference a few weeks ago, Marc Andreessen (Mosiac, Netscape, LoudCloud, Skype) in his interview boldly proclaimed his belief in the mobile web or webapps. The entire interview is at the link above, but here are some snippets:

Walt: Apps versus the browser, Web apps versus local apps…as somebody who had a lot to do with the browser, how do you feel about that?

Andreessen: “It’s worth revisiting why the browser made sense 15-20 years ago. In those days (grandpa said) you had to actually install the application, and there was this nonstop mess of trying to keep everything up to date.” The app model with its shopping process and updates over the air is a lot better experience. But I have an iPhone, Web OS phone, Microsoft phone, I’ve tried them all. And at the end of the week I have to click for updates. In the long run, the browser model makes sense.

Kara: Does it already make sense?

Andreessen: All the good smartphones and tablets have great browsers on them. HTML5 is a big step forward for the browser. We’re seeing companies saying “I can have my cake and eat it too. I can build an HTML5 application and wrap it in an app.” “As long as you’re connected all the time to an infinitely fast network, the browser is best for everything.”

Andreessen. We hear you. We believe it. We are living it.

Our Mobile Web platform Work2Go has been successfully used to create new webapps and to take existing web assets and convert them to webapps. No App store, No constraints.