Internet Report 2016

The "Queen of the Internet" Mary Meeker's Internet Trends report released today at the 2016 General Assembly in the US.

Below is the quick summary of the report with the highlights:

The number of Internet users worldwide exceeded 3 billion, an increase of 9 percent over the previous year, the global Internet penetration rate reached 42%. 

India's Internet users reached 277 million, up 40% over last year which makes India the second largest Internet market, after China.

The global smart phone users increased by 21% over the previous year, an increase of 31 percent last year, the growth rate slowed down; after a 5-year high growth in 2015 global smart phone shipments up 10%, up 28% last year.

Smartphone users in Asia Pacific grew 23% last year up 35%.

Global mobile phone operating system share, iOS share in 2015 was 16%, Android share reached 81%.

To benefit from the rapid growth of mobile advertising (66%), 2015 US online advertising grew by 20% last year to 16% in 2015 increased by only 5% of the desktop ads.

Google and Facebook, the two companies together to eat 76 percent of the US online advertising market.

Desktop ad blocking users has reached 220 million mobile ad blocker users reached 420 million, mainly concentrated in China, India and Indonesia.

E-commerce share of the US retail distribution channels, from less than 2% in 2000, increased to more than 10% in 2015, reached more than $ 340 billion.

Message type applications continue its rapid growth, industry leaders including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat.

Voice is becoming a computing interface is the most efficient form of computer input, the machine accuracy of the speech recognition from about 70% in 2010, increased to about 90% by 2016.

IPhone sales in 2015 may have reached its peak, the next Amazon Echo equipment sales will begin to take off?

China Internet Report:

From more than one measure, China has become the market leader in the Internet, the number of Chinese Internet users reached 668 million.

Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu three companies are China's mobile Internet market leader, they accounted for 71% of Chinese users of mobile consumer long time.

2015, China's online advertising market has more than television advertising.

2016, There were 31% of the micro-channel micro-channel shopping users, while in 2015 the figure was 15%.

Global Internet market leader: Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Tencent, Alibaba and other companies, flush with cash.

What do you think about this report & is this what you expect to be coming by?

Link to the complete video

New Role, New Responsibilities, New Goals with Emotion UI

I believe “that the best things that you receive in life are those things you never asked for”.

Being enjoying my role as a Business Developer for Strategic Alliance at Huawei Devices; much satisfied I couldn’t have asked for anything better…but destiny proves itself every time.

This month I officially took up a new role -“Business Operation for Huawei Devices Global ROM Emotion UI”

Emotion UI:

Emotion UI is a skin over the base android that would define Smartphone experience on all Huawei Devices. It provides various features such as, interesting navigational experiences that can be easily customized based on one’s personal needs, rich pool of personalized themes that bring a more vivid visual experience with interactive animation that can be changed by simply shaking the phone, pre-installed performance enhancing functions, easy Widgets management, and Presets for driving, attending meetings, and outdoors.

The surprise element in the UI is the way applications are managed (moved, installed, or uninstalled) directly from the home screen without using an app launcher. Widgets can be easily added by pressing and holding a blank section of the wallpaper.

My favorite feature is "Me Widget" - a folder of grouped widgets that the user can customize as a single unit providing quick access to favorite contacts, photo galleries, or music player.

Major responsibility of my team would be to:-

• Brand Emotion UI: Show how apart from hardware Huawei is also very serious about software innovation
• User Engagement: Get most of the current Huawei Smartphone users to experience Emotion UI
• Android Upgrades : Release latest android upgrade along with enhanced user experience with Emotion UI
• Community building: Creating & building fan clubs who will help us in making Emotion UI the best design for smartphone in the coming days.

Like the fact that Emotion UI was not designed to make users say “wow”, but to make them say “wow that's nice and I did that!”

Yes! I am very excited and getting all set to deliver my best in this new role.

Join & Follow us: Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter

Google I/O: Day 1 Keynote takeaways

Android growth rate : 100 million activated Android devices. 400,000 new Android devices activated every day. In all 200,000 free and paid applications available in Android Market

Android everywhere strategy: Based on this strategy, Google launched an Android@Home, which allows Android apps to discover, connect and communicate with appliances and devices in your home.

Android Open Accessory: These are set of API which will help developers start building new hardware accessories that will work across all Android devices. Hardware and software will be released in a reference design so Android can be plugged into fitness equipment, robots and other devices.

Ice Cream Sandwich: Android Ice Cream Sandwich is Honeycomb 3.1 and was an effort to create one OS experience and interface across multiple devices. Ice Cream Sandwich will bring everything we love about Honeycomb on tablet to phone, including the holographic user interface, more multitasking, the new launcher and richer widgets.

Multimedia cloud service: Google launched Music Beta , a new service that lets users to upload personal music collection to the cloud for streaming to computer and phones. Added Movies for rent to Android Market. Users can rent from Android Market on the web, and soon will be rolling out to Verizon XOOM customers.

Updates for a wide range of devices: Google is working to get tighter with partners to create a better experience. Open Handset Alliance, are working together to adopt guidelines for how quickly devices are updated after a new platform release, and also for how long they will continue to be updated.

Finally Android 3.1 will be Open sourced and will be scaling up to Google TV later this year. Day 1 was less of surprises but indeed it brought a smile to all the Google IO attendees as they all became proud owners of Samsung Galaxy tablet.

Talk at MSRIT on Android being Open Source

I was invited by VRGLINUG the GNU/Linux Users from M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT). Annually, Mukthi a premier, student focused, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)event. It serves as a forum for promoting FOSS among the student community, and spreading an awareness of how FOSS can be a good alternative to proprietary software.

Mukthi 11.04 was hosted on April 23rd and 24th 2011, featured a host of talks by FOSS luminaries.
My talk was about: “Android is open, but let’s do it right”.
- Android overview
- Why Android?
- Open platform and Open source
- Android is Open, what does it mean for a developer ?
- Abiding to OSS policies

Some interesting questions I faced from the OSS enthusiast students:
- Why is honeycomb not open sourced by google ?
- How should we get over the fragmentation issues ?
- Can we integrate QT on android ?
- Can we program C/C++ on android ?
- Why new version builds on devices like Motorola etc take time ?

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Android is Open, so lets do it right

View more presentations from Bhavya Siddappa.

Some interesting comments from the audience:
“Android is not truly OSS”
“Android innovation speed is amazing”
“It would be great to see less prices android phones coming soon in the market”
There were some interesting talks by well recognized experts from the FOSS world, as well as professionals from the software industry. It was very well received by all.
I had fun interacting with the knowledgeable audience. One more memorable event for me :)

The message is very clear "OSS will never die and all thanks to the great community support and believers "

Mobile World Congress 2011 as expected with less surprises

It happened to be my first MWC and thus you could guess how excited I was. I was sharing the space with the 60,000 people from 200 countries gathered in Barcelona from MWC.

It was a week –long parade of technology, gadgets, networking, parties, celebrations of awards and also the fun of witnessing some innovation and opportunity that mobile brings to business.

I have captured all the announcements, launches of gadgets, introduction of new technology and company’s strategies in this presentation with some pics. Hope you enjoy going thorough them.

However following were the key strong highlights and message that I took back from the event:
Android is everywhere and is getting larger day by day: Google mobile OS stole the show. More than 200,000 ppl a day buying an android phone, confirms how serious is Google about Mobile and how good then can be in marketing too

Games on the move: Sony Ericsson launched its much-anticipated Xperia play handset, which will forever change the way people think about Smartphone’s and mobile gaming. Angry birds with 3D on Windows Mobile phone, will be worth a wait.

Mobile gets social: Foursquare, twitter and Facebook SNS are now a major part of the mobile dictionary. Phones are sensors connected to the network, when we use them, they can help us understand the intent we’re giving to our loved ones.

Noika and Microsoft Friendship: Can estimate the level of commitment as the announcement was on the Valentine Day. As they wished to create a challenger now its goanna be three-horse race. Whose betting on what ?

Mobile Payment: NFC (Near Field Communications) are changing the way mobile devices will be used in future. It provides consumers with a convenient way of buying goods. So the question would be when someone leaves from home” Did u carry your Mobile Wallet?”

World of Tablets: Every device manufacture understands the power of a tablet and thus we see Motorola, HTC, Samsung, Blackberry and Apple all in the game. With features like Enterprise, video conferencing tablets will soon become commonplace in offices and homes.

Mobile Web the future: Consumers want to view or access the same content across a number of devices and not to be restricted by any OS, device or network.

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Mobile World Congress 2011 Overview

View more presentations from Bhavya Siddappa.

I have lots of stories to share, some funny and some very interesting. So why don’t ull test your patience meter, till I post them on my blog.

In the mean while enjoy watching my MWC http://bit.ly/h83wjS
and Barcelona pics http://bit.ly/g6TS8S
don’t make an attenp to search me in the pics.
*(For those u don’t know I am suffering from cameraphobia).

How the year 2010 had been for Android

Jan:
-Year started off with the release of Android SDK 2.1
-Google launched its first phone Nexus One on 2.1 running Flash 10.1
-Motorola Backflip with Yahoo as a default search page, LG GT450 Android Phones got launched
-20,000 units of Nexus1 were sold out in the opening week

Feb:
-With the introduction of live wallpapers in Éclair version, users started enjoying richer, animated, interactive backgrounds on their home screen.
-There were many edge cases in the service lifecycle that made it very easy to accidentally leave a service running; new APIs in 2.0 make this much easier to deal with.
-Android SDK introduced a new UI for end users to monitor and manage the running services on their device.

Mar
-With the help of Voice-enabled keyboard feature in 2.1, one could dictate message instead of typing it.
-Android NDK r3 version released
-Google Labs released Gesture Search App for android

April
-Google started working on Android Tablet
-Google confirmed Android 2.1 downgrades Image Quality 2.0
-Android twitter app from google was made available in the app store, this app brought in an evolving Android UI design patterns.

May
-Google Developers day – Google IO was hosted and it got an awesome response and support, for the first time the keynotes were live streamed.
-Android 2.2 (Froyo) was introduced with features: Cloud to Device Messaging, Dalvik JIT etc
-Through the new app market feature, users could report bug and developers were able to receive crash and freeze reports from their users.
-Google Latitude API were made public

June:
-Android 2.2 SDK and NDK R4 both were available for download
-An application which violations Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement or Content Policy or any malicious application that poses a threat, google developed technologies and processes to remotely remove an installed application from devices.
-Logitech brought Android iPhone apps for Google TV
-This was beyond imagination, but it came true: iPhone 3G was running Android 2.2
-French, German, Italian and Spanish speakers started enjoying using Google Voice Search

July
-As android 2.2 supports application installation on SD card, this gave users room for many more apps, and benefits to apps from games categorie.
-Swype came to Android virtual keyboard
-Android Market welcomed Korea
-Google announced the release simple and free service provides a secure mechanism to manage access to all Android Market paid applications. At run time, application can query the Android Market licensing server to determine the license status of your users. It returns information on whether your users are authorized to use the app based on stored sales records.

Aug:
-It was interesting to see new players like Spice Mobility, Dell, Micromax launching Android devices
-Samsung Galaxy S got launched, which till today is sold like hot cake.
-Google Android overtook Windows Mobile

Sep:
-Android 2.2 started to see wide adoption
-2007 when Google announced Android, Andy Rubin said “We hope thousands of different phones will be powered by Android.” But at this stage was growing beyond phones to new kinds of devices.
-Samsung Galaxy Tab was announced and it was said to be a wake-up call for Android developers. It was scary for the developers as they had never seen a screen like this on an Android device before.
-Launched Voice-Action in the new Google Voice Search for Android — an awesome new way to search faster.
-Developers from 20 more countries were now able to sell paid apps on Android Market.
18 additional countries were now able to purchase paid apps from Android Market.

Oct:
-There was lot of buzz happening around about Google TV and Galaxy Tab
-Android was quickly moving to hardware that are increasingly different from the smartphone devices, having lack of features like GPS, accelerometers, and video cameras
-Google announced the mobile editing capabilities for Google docs on android and iPad
-Adobe AIR 2.5 cross platform runtime environment for android released

Nov
-Showing content ratings for all applications on Android Market. This provided users with additional information to help them select the best applications for them.
-U.S Military people favored Android and they all owned an Android phone
-Google Map 4.6 with new features in its Location Based Services was released for android

Dec
-Google with partnership of Samsung launched Nexus S with 2.3 android sdk with support for NFC
-Google Map 5.0 was released which was faster, supported offline & -iIn 3D look
-Android Market Client Update; more payment options in android market
-Skyfire the popular mobile browser released 3.0.1 for Android
-Google launched a new eBook store to read digital books optimized for android devices running 2.1
-Andy confirms google activating 300,000 Android devices per day

Conclude:
When google launched the Nexus One, they thought this would be the flagship mobile device for their new Android operating system. The Nexus One served as the blueprint for Android devices, which exploded across most major mobile carriers. With their open approach and flexibility in what carriers and manufacturers can do with the OS, Android’s numbers grew. Android began to surpass the iPhone

As android became more popular, there was talk of fragmentation of the apps ecosystem and the operating system itself. With frequent updates from Google, but carriers dragging their feet on sending updates to their customers, the problem seemed serious for developers and Android fans. Fragmentation may soon become less of an issue as more handsets are updated to the latest Android OS, but still its wait and watch.

If you need a phone or a tablet with an advanced OS but are turned off by Apple’s “closed” nature of premium pricing, Android is the device for you.

Confession from a so called Android Fan Gal.

Yes I bough the iPad and when I said this I know it hurted most of them. So I am not doing any justification on this here, just expressing and sharing my thoughts about iPad.

It all happened during my visit to London last month.

I was at Planet of Apps Europe Conference and luckily was sitting next to BBC Technology Correspondent who was hosting the event for the day. He had 2 devices & no price for guessing – Apple iPad and Samsung recently launched Galaxy Tablet.

We started the conversation and when I asked him “What are your thoughts on Samsung Tablet” he took both the device next to each other and started comparing.

To summarize my observation:

Browser experience, typing experience & video rendering on iPad was far more better then the Samsung tablet. On that sadly Samsung Tab is overly priced and the touch pad is not very responding.

Then my dear boss handed over his iPad asking me to play around with it….that was actually the beginning.

I was falling for iPad as I started :

- Playing games

- Watching youtube videos

- Checking and replying to mails

- Updating my Facebook status

- and tweeting from the iPad twitter app

- Making notes

- Reading an iBook

When I was back to my hotel, I was actually missing something and was hating to work on my laptop, asking myself a question “Have I got used to iPad ?”

I got the answer and early morning I went to the Apple store on Oxford Street and bought my iPad.

The question here is “Did iPad got sold here or its me which got totally sold out for iPad”

As I was back to India….

Mom said- “U were supposed to buy an android phone, has the size of the phone increased these days?”

Sister said- “How could you buy a mac product?”

Dad said- “Why a gadget, why not branded watch, cloths, shoes & diamonds?”

Friends said – “U are an Android betrayer”

But my 6 yrs old niece simply loves playing with iPad and I am happy to see a smile on here face.

I am still passionate about android, but the fact is if a gadget can bring in smile on a face…its any time worth-it.

A good friend Soham Mondal made a productive use of the iPad and here are his thoughts on the iPad (1.0) after a week or two of using the iPad

Pros

1. The web-surfing experience. Apart from the lack of flash, the surfing experience on the iPad is unparalleled to any other device. The zippy touch + screen size experience is much better than that on any desktop or laptop and the galaxy tab doesn't even come close!
2. Videos/Youtube. If you like watching music videos or youtube vlogs/flicks, there is nothing like the iPad, you can now watch videos while you lie down on the bed or while you wait for your cab to reach the office car or anywhere the go, it looks great and feels very convenient to use
3. Apps. Some apps look and feel downright amazing on the iPad, games n newsreaders feel right at home here!
4. Battery life. 7+ hours while watching videos and surfing the net over wifi is no small achievement
5. Form factor, screen size. Apart from the weight, everything feels just right! It is sleek and very portable.
6. You can pair your apple bluetooth keyboard to the iPad to have a mobile workstation on the go, this is a really practical and powerful solution for mobile-workers!

Cons

1. It is a tad too heavy! Yup, you won't notice this when you first hold it, but if you plan to read books or watch videos while you hold it, it really weighs down on you. This is easily the biggest flaw of iPad 1.0 and I'm sure apple will work on a lighter frame for the next version of the iPad!
2. Speakers. One (mono) speaker just doesn't cut it these days. On top of that, the speakers are dry and weak and just do not do justice to the videos played on this device.
3. Apps. Apart from the handful of good free apps, most apps are either outrageously priced(some even free on the iPhone) or just not present. Either way, you can't really complain considering that the iPad has just been around for less than a year.
4. Youtube! Unless you jailbreak the iPad, the youtube player defaults to the highest resolution for videos. In other words for some videos it will default to 720p or 1080p and you have no way to reduce that and u can expect videos to buffer forever for most contemporary channels over 2/4 mbps connections.
5. Lack of camera(s), this doesn't really matter to me but many people might object to the lack of a front facing camera for video conferencing!
6. Lack of a back button. You would be surprised that I would complain about this but after using an android device for the past few months you cannot live without a back button. It is so practical and jumping back to the home screen or using the software back approach is not practical most of the times!

All in all, it is a great device, you wouldn't really think you'd need one until you actually get one. It is great for watching videos and surfing the web and I've actually started using my laptop less after getting this. However, I would definitely want it to be lighter and with a better speaker, if that's the case I would definitely not mind going in for the iPad 2.0 wifi + 3g version!

Final confession: I enjoy all the attention that I get when I carry along with me my iPad.

Good Resources to start with Android development

These are the blogs, websites which helped me and is still helping me in my Android Learning Journey:

Official Google Android Site developer.android.com

Good Android Videos and learning from DroidCon http://skillsmatter.com/event/os-mobile-server/droidcon-london-2009

Android Development Tutorial - Froyo http://www.vogella.de/articles/Android/article.html

Android People http://www.androidpeople.com/

Android Market http://www.android.com/market/

Android Stack Over Flow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/android

Android Blogging and hard code programming http://risesoftware.com/

Android World class trainer http://marakana.com/training/android/

Oreilly Trainings http://training.oreilly.com/androidapps-java/
http://training.oreilly.com/androidapps/

Android UI http://mobiforge.com/designing/story/understanding-user-interface-android-part-1-layouts

Good Friends Good Android learning site http://www.androidcompetencycenter.com/

Android Open Source Projects http://sites.google.com/a/android.com/opensource/projects/

Code Android Singapore http://sg.codeandroid.org/

Android Development Community http://anddev.org

Useful site with information on getting started http://code.google.com/android/index.html -

Developers blog androiddevelopment.org/

Android community with articles, forums, blogs, etc… androidcommunity.com/

Android Walking City http://awalkingcity.com/blog/

Tricks on Android http://www.jsharkey.org/blog/

Android Code & Apps http://www.tomgibara.com/android/

My life with Android http://mylifewithandroid.blogspot.com/

Android official blog http://android-developers.blogspot.com/

Android Developer Tutorials http://developerlife.com/tutorials/

Android OS News, downloads & Tutorials http://www.helloandroid.com/tutorials

Warrior Point http://www.warriorpoint.com/blog/

Android Blogger http://androidblogger.blogspot.com/

Android Linux kernel posts http://android.noisepages.com/

Android News http://www.talkandroid.com

SQLLite DB in Android: http://www.reigndesign.com/blog/using-your-own-sqlite-database-in-android-applications/

I am forced to blog this….joys of getting mails & tweets asking them to guide them through their android learning.

Hope you’ll find it useful… have fun with Android learning.

Talk on Dual Display for Android

It was a privilege to be a speaker at MODS – Mobile Developer Summit 2010 and BAUG – Bangalore Android User Group.

MODS:

Mobile Developer Summit hosted on Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at NIMHANS Convention Center, Bangalore. It featured a convergence of thousands of developers, technologists and industry players from the mobile and web developer communities. Startups, investors, mobile carriers and device manufacturers benefited from better understanding the latest technologies that will define the mobile market of tomorrow.

BAUG:

Bangalore Android Meetup group is targeted especially towards Google Android Developers and people who are linked to Android in some or the other way. Aim of the group is to share Android specific knowledge and networking among the Android enthusiasts. They have monthly meetups to discuss & share anything related to Android.

My talk focused on addressing the following questions:

- What is Dual Display?

- Why Dual Drift is the next Generation?

- How android renders on Screen?

- Various solutions / design approaches for Dual Display

- What are the Technical challenges faced?

- What’s the role of Surface flinger, Window Manger?

- How best a dual display can be used in Application Development?

What got the delegates excited was when we shared the Full Dual display solution implemented in MWC 2010 by Teleca with collaboration with Texas Instruments.

Check out the Presentation:

Dual Display on Android

View more presentations from Bhavya Siddappa.

When taken a pool from the audience 70% of them said they will not like dual display on smartphone, but will like it in Dashboard, TV & eBook reader

Questions received from Delegates:

- When will google support Dual Display

- Which is the best design approach

- Has teleca contributed Dual Display solution towards open source

- When can we expect dual display ebook readers in the market

Feedback received from Delegates:

- Dual Display looks good for TV, Dashboard but a big no to Smart phones

- Smart phones with dual display will have issues in running existing android applications

- Today where we talk of reducing cost of android phone, dual display will actually work in reverse to the pricing structure.

- There are more challenges in the Dual Display, however the scope for innovation from application development is great.

Compliments received from Delegates:

“Very energetic talk”

“Eye opener for me, as I being an application developer never though of it”.

“I came all the way from Gujarat, to listen to your talk…indeed worth it”.

“We wish you to do some android technical writing for our Magazine”.

‘I didn’t get an opportunity to blink my eyes for a while”.

Hall at MODS for my talk was houseful; I appreciate few delegates sitting on the steps and few standing throughout the talk. The best memorable part was when a gentleman close to my dad’s age come up to me saying

‘Hi, Thanks for the energetic talk, I am looking of getting into Android, would you bet on it for the coming few years”.

I said “Yes, you should totally and it’s a right time”.

I did my Job as an Evangelist, but why is that when I try telling my dad about my passion for Android, its just another platform for him or say its his enemy as android takes up lot of his daughter time :)

Planet of Apps Europe 2010 – Day 1 “Developer Day”

Keynote talk on Delivering Differentiated Apps and Maximizing Revenue with BlackBerry: by Tyler Lessard

Gets on the stage to Introduce Blackberry’s strategy, ”Super apps” are application that people use every day, as opposed to disposable ones. They are launching “InApp” payment, but believe that the future is most likely free apps with added features purchased within the app. They are connected with operators to open operator billing, enabling customers without credit card to access the servies.

Advertising is become a big part of their offering and Analytics are becoming a full part of the platform. BBM will be soon open to developers in order to support building a Social Platform. RIM will have right device to support Adobe technology.

BlackBerry PlayBook is delivering a high end internet experience. They didn’t wanted to take phone platform to make a tablet so they went for a full fledge high end computing OS” – That was the move of buying QNX.

Keynote Presentation: Building applications that utilize location-based services : by Raimo Van from Layar

Started off by saying “We’re adding experience on top of your world”. The Layar ecosystem is composed of 3 parts: Publishing on your computer, a Discovery Browser and a Player Browser. Just as Youtube, they decided that the player should be available for developers to integrate it in their apps. Challenges are on the side of sensors, integration and testing, porting.

They have 1m + users worldwide. Concluded by saying, “don’t be an app, be a platform/browser don’t do it alone!”

Powering Communities to create an index of the real world: by Jan-Joost Kraal from eBuddy

eBuddy apps are on iPhone and Android. They use in app ads. The click through rate is higher on a native app than on a browser version.”. Being having issues with the iPhone SDK advertisement platform they choose AdMob platform and are happy with the results. For mobile advertizing

funding model, a lot of traffic is needed.

Discoverability/Findability is an issue. So they changed their name to ‘eBuddy messenger’ because people search for ‘messenger'. HTML5 looks like a good opportunity but they are lacking the distribution channel.

Partnering with social media to achieve profitability: by Romain Ehrhard from Tellmewhere

Tip: “Use the social network to kickstart your community, Make sure that you still remain independent from the social networks, you never know what happens”.

Branding is important. Don’t have localized name, fails to work for internationals.

Build vs Buy? – What will lead to long term commercial success?: by Dave Addey from Agant

Do you really need an app, or do you just want one? Apps are there to kill time. We know where you live! We also know where you are. Next train home – one button that let you know when your next train home is, so that you can get one more pint at the pub.

If you have a great idea and you know it makes sense, go for an app, but just do it well. They think that iOS is the best platform: stable, appstore, being long time in the business and have a established platform.

Apps vs Browser: by Mark Curtis from Flirtomatic

Currently it is very hard to make browser compete with app because; Touchscreen UI brings expectations of Sideswipe, Pinch and expand and Access to key functionality like camera, gallery, GPS. Now Google pointing the way for HTML 5.

Both need to capture attention in noisy market and advertising works but hard to sustain. Viral on mobile not yet as effective as web. Browser search becoming very cost effective, but where is app search ?