I AM A BIG BELIEVER in the direction the mobile web will take and I think it's down the pathway of hybrid apps with HTML5. That's where we're steering our BSc in Creative Multimedia at LIT-Clonmel.
Standards for HTML5 continue to evolve and their implementation is a little clunky at the moment. The operative term is "laggy" and maybe "broken" and that is what will strengthen native apps in the short term. However, the web is going mobile, not app-centric. We're trying to give small publishers a lifeline to the mobile web. They cannot afford separate app development for each of the major platforms. They can only afford to manage one flow of content and it makes sense to engineer that content flow around HTML5 as its base with a native wrapper around the content. By 2013, even the dumbest phones on the Irish market will come with HTML5 compatible handsets. Those customers want a mobile web experience. Many of them will use fiscally-constrained pay as you go contracts. They have neither the money nor the inclination to install apps but they want the mobile web delivered to them. And it will be there, wrapped in HTML 5.
Currently reading Introducing HTML 5(2nd edition) ISBN 978-0321784421
