It’s no secret that I think mobile web apps will be huge. They might never supplant native apps (games are one place I see native apps winning for quite some time), but they’ll be a valuable part of the mobile app ecosystem. I’ve been linking to articles and writing about this trend for a couple weeks now on MobileHTML5.com. I also wrote about how iPad caused a surge of interest in HTML5 and then about how the killer feature of Apple’s iPhone/mobile platform is the App Store’s ability to pay developers.
The fact that I believe mobile web apps will be huge — but that the actual platform isn’t the biggest reason iPhone succeeds (it’s the developer’s ability to easily monetize via the App Store) — led me to think of ways to help developers promote their mobile web apps. This is why last week we launched the ability to Add a Web App to AppStoreHQ. As of today, we already have over 4,000 mobile web apps listed, including some truly great apps like Google Voice, Google Buzz, Reader, and more.
This ability to help users discover (and developers promote) the best mobile apps, regardless of platform, is unbelievably valuable. Not to mention the fact that all our standard blog and Twitter tracking and recommendations also work.
As Apple’s App Store showed, it’s also about removing the muck. That’s why we’ll be helping developers make money by allowing users to pay for mobile web apps through our site. To that end, I’ve already created a very rough outline of what this would look like with a test app I created. Check out the pipeline and let me know what you think (but be warned, the app is absolutely not worth 1 cent, let alone the 99 cents I’m selling it for so I wouldn’t actually spend the money unless you understand you’re not getting ANYTHING of real value and are willing to waste 99 cents). If you’re interested in learning about this feature (it’s a dead-simple API), how to monetize your mobile web app, or even test drive this feature, shoot me an email. We want to help you and need your input to do so.
I’m very excited to have a mobile web app app store on AppStoreHQ and I think it’ll be a great addition for users looking for mobile apps and for developers looking to promote their apps.
