It is striking to see the different trajectories mobile operating systems are on when compared to the mobile web.

In 2006, two smartphone operating systems accounted for 81 percent of the market. There were really only four platforms to worry about: Symbian, Windows Mobile, RIM, and Palm OS. These represented 93 percent of the market.

Fast-forward to the present and the picture is different. No single operating system has more than 50 percent marketshare. There are seven operating systems being tracked and even within operating systems there are fragmentation concerns.

The future promises more operating system fragmentation, not less:

• In February, Nokia and Intel joined forces to create a new open source smartphone operating system called MeeGo.
• HP’s purchase of Palm means that WebOS isn’t going away any time soon.
• Windows Phone 7 will replace Windows Mobile, but not immediately. It is also unclear how Kin fits into the picture.
• Samsung will ship its own operating system called Bada later this summer. Before you discount Bada, remember that Samsung has the highest percentage of U.S. mobile subscribers, sells more touch screen phones than anyone else, and aims to sell 18 million smartphones this year.
• HTC is rumored to be considering its own operating system. HTC is the fourth largest manufacturer of smartphones.
• Motorola is rumored to have bought its own mobile operating system. Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha said during Q1’s earnings call, “I continue to believe that at some point … that owning our own OS will be a very important thing.”

This list doesn’t include differences within each particular operating system. Much has been made of Android fragmentation due to different user experiences like MotoBlur and HTC’s Sense UI. And some argue that even the homogenous iPhone platform is starting to fragment.

There are more mobile operating systems coming and no signs of the mobile OS market narrowing any time soon.

The mobile web is converging

By contrast, the mobile web is converging on HTML5 and WebKit.

Unlike mobile operating systems, mobile browsers were fragmented a few years ago. The list of early mobile browsers include a series of proprietary browser engines:

• jB5 Browser
• Polaris Browser
• Blazer
• Internet Explorer Mobile
• Openwave
• NetFront
• Obigo
• Blackberry Browser

That’s a fraction of the browser options that were available to mobile phone users. And while there is still work to be done to make mobile browsers more consistent, it is nothing compared to the inconsistencies between early mobile browsers.

Today, every mobile browser is moving toward HTML5 support, if it isn’t there already:

WebKit: The dominant mobile platform

The WebKit browser engine now has a dominant position in mobile browsers. When BlackBerry ships its new browser based on WebKit, 85 percent of smartphones will ship with a WebKit-based browser.

WebKit is also used by numerous feature phones. Vision Mobile estimates that at the end of 2009, WebKit had been embedded in more than 250 million devices.

Advancing the mobile browser

In many ways, HTML5 is just the baseline of where mobile browsers are headed. Many companies, from carriers to handset manufacturers, are looking to mobile browser innovation as a key to their mobile strategies.

• WebOS extends Javascript to provide access to device characteristics like the address book, camera, and accelerometer.
• Sony Ericsson worked with the PhoneGap community to create its WebSDK.
• Symbian is wooing developers with access to the dialer, calendar, camera, contacts and other tools using web technology.
• Forty carriers and handset manufacturers have formed the Wholesale Application Community to build an open platform that will work on all devices. They seek to combine JIL and BONDI. JIL and BONDI provide access to device APIs via web technology.

There are two common threads in each of these stories.

First, companies throughout the ecosystem are extending mobile browsers to provide more functionality and attract developers to their platforms. Second, they are all approaching it in similar ways built on HTML widget technology.

Much like WebKit, there will be inconsistencies between these efforts in the near term, but all of these efforts are headed in the same direction.

Two to many, many to one

In 2006, two mobile operating systems controlled 81 percent of the market. This year there are 10 different smartphone operating systems.

Over that same period of time, mobile browsers have gone from many different proprietary rendering engines to the point where WebKit alone will power browsers in more than 85 percent of the smartphones sold.

From two operating systems to many. From many browsers to one. We have two core mobile technologies headed in opposite directions.

Citysourced is an iphone application that empowers citizens to identify civil issues (potholes, graffiti, trash, snow removal, etc.) and report them to city hall for quick resolution – they are calling it a “mobile civic engagement tool”.

Here’s how it works. You know that pothole your car keeps falling into as you try and pull into your driveway? CitySourced can help with that. Pull out your iPhone, snap a pic, select the report type and hit send. CitySourced will geo-tag your picture and send a PDF report to the city council member that handles that district.

Here are all the items that you can tag and report:

• abandoned bicycle or vehicle
• animal services – biting, deceased, not leashed, not permitted, pest control
• driveway cleaning, danger, degradation, obstruction
• graffiti removal
• homeless encampment, nuisance
• illegal dumping/trash, fire/burning
• leaf collection
• parking illegally, illegally in driveway, in red zone, without permit
• parking meter broken, parking sign
• plants/trees danger, degradation, obstruction, overgrown, removal
• roadway cleaning, danger, degradation, obstruction
• sidewalk cleaning, danger, degradation, obstruction
• street light, sign
• trash can/bin broken, removal
• water leak driveway, fire hydrant, sidewalk, street, unknown
• yard waste removal
• other including building code enforcement, noise complaint, property violation, any not listed

Currently there are over 1900 cities in the database and users have the ability to add a city from the CitySourced website. The app is free to download and according to Kurt Daradics, Co-Founder of CitySourced, the way they plan to make money is off of the individual cities.

I think this is a great example of how private companies can leverage technology to improve the bureaucratic inefficiencies of local government while still generating revenue.

In his blog post titled Mobile 2.0 – Apps vs. Browser Based Web Services, Dennis Bournique of WapReview.com concludes that “within five years standalone mobile applications will largely be replaced by browser based mobile services  just as is happening on the desktop today”.  I, for the most part, agree with this statement.

Prior to the launch of the iPhone in June of 2007, developers looking to get any sizable distribution were forced into difficult and long business development processes with wireless carriers who generally took very large proportions of revenues generated.  A developer with a free ad-supported app that was lucky enough to negotiate a distribution agreement would be left with little revenue.  Additionally, none of the handset manufacturers were exposing much of their device’s OS capabilities and handset browsers were far behind where they are today only two years later (the BlackBerry 8700 was one of the hottest devices on the market).

Apple’s iPhone and App Store launch created a perfect storm for independent mobile application developers.  Developers were given a rich SDK that would enable them to build apps that were unthinkable a year before, while simultaneously providing a massive distribution opportunity.  A two year onslaught of Apple’s marketing and TechCrunch’s iPhone application coverage ensued.

The tech community, especially in Nor-Cal, often get caught up in the latest tech trend and one of the more recent ones was the iPhone and the ‘there’s an app for that’ concept – which of course has been extended to other platforms beyond iPhone OS.

And here we are today.  I’ve spoken to various individuals from investors, marketers, to application developers who only seem to see the here and the now – native application development (or more often iPhone application development).  As Dennis put it, “there seems to be a tendency today to see apps as the future of mobile and to dismiss all browser based mobile services as second rate.”   I personally believe that this is a very short sighted view of the future of mobile.  I’d prefer to look to visionaries like Eric Schmidt who in May stated “mobile will be a larger business than the PC-Web. But it will take a few years.”

Those barriers to entry and barriers to development that made native application so essential are being broken down with every new device released.  Manufacturers are exposing more and more of their OS, GPS for example, through Javascript APIs available on the mobile web.  And now with HTML5, mobile Web apps can take advantage of on device data storage.  Mobile Web applications can indeed provide comparable user experiences to their native application counterparts and will only continue to improve.

I foresee a continual ‘blurring’ of the distinctions between mobile web/mobile client applications, as well as the distinctions between desktop/mobile websites.  Within a matter of a few years, the mobile web will share the same capabilities as any other platform and will indeed replace native applications as the development platform of choice.  Developers who are in early stand to gain the most.

RIM has announced that the BlackBerry Widget SDK is now available for download.

The BlackBerry Widget SDK 1.0 Beta 1 contains the BlackBerry Widget Packager 1.0 Beta 1, a BlackBerry Device Simulator, and a lot of documentation and samples.

The BlackBerry Widget Packager 1.0 Beta 1 is a new tool that allows web developers to package up their web assets into BlackBerry Widgets (small, discrete, standalone web applications that use HTML, CSS and JavaScript). A BlackBerry Widget looks, behaves and has the same security mechanisms as a native BlackBerry application. BlackBerry Widgets can be installed on a BlackBerry smartphone like any native application and can be extended to use device-specific information and data using the BlackBerry Widget APIs.

The sounds very similar to what Palm has done with it’s WebOS SDK and I really like where RIM is going with this.  As someone with experience managing development of all varieties of mobile applications, (mobile web, thick-client, thin-client), on a variety of platforms including BlackBerry OS, I’m very excited about this new SDK.

Developing native applications for BlackBerry OS has been a pain in the past because of the multitude of OS versions.  Trying to test your applications across a variety of BlackBerry devices is always an expensive and time consuming process.  Then when you finally launch, managing and updating applications is always a challenge – especially when doing so across an array of BlackBerry OS versions.

On the other hand, a very thin-client mobile web application like Frugalytics Web Launcher, is very easy to maintain and update but device API’s for the mobile web are very limited and the BlackBerry browser in general is very limited in its capabilities (although that will change soon now that they acquired a mobile browser software company).

The HTML/Javascript widget model is a great happy medium that makes developers lives’ a whole lot easier while maintaining a great end user experience.  I look forward to working with this new SDK.