Competition is heating up between smartphone applications and mobile browsers, prompting brands to rethink where to channel development resources. Some say that applications, popular with the youth market, will displace search engines. Others that open APIs allow browsers to adopt the best features of applications. ‘For smartphone users, mobile web is the killer app,’ says Nielsen’s David Gill at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in Austin, TX. Given that most people either have or want a smartphone, mobile web, formerly known as WAP, is back in a big way.
Few would deny that smartphone applications have been ...