Apple iOS4?

Gary Schwartz, founder/CEO of Impact Mobile, New York, feels that Apple is too focused on appli­ca­tions and that mobile com­merce growth is going to depend on more than just apps.

“The iOS 4 con­tin­ues to focus on app dom­i­na­tion,” Mr. Schwartz said. “IOS 4 offers app pro­duc­tiv­ity fea­tures such as app mul­ti­task­ing, which allows for ser­vices to run in the back­ground while the shop­per nav­i­gate sec­ondary apps. No sur­prise Apple’s focus is still on 200,000-plus apps which are, in great part, Apple’s mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions strategy.

“Other play­ers in-market are focus­ing on the super-app, the mobile browser, which, with HTML5 allows for rich app-like func­tion­al­ity,” he said. “Steve Jobs talks about apps and the HTML5 browser as two sep­a­rate plat­forms – Apple con­tin­ues to focus all of its energy on apps and in-app iAds.

“Com­merce enhance­ments such as iOS 4’s peer-to-peer app gift­ing is a self-serving fea­ture. Ulti­mately, Apple will have to let go of this smor­gas­bord approach to the phone-top and focus on cen­tral­ized browser func­tion­al­ity for mcommerce.”

Mr. Schwartz said that shop­pers need a one-stop impulse click.

“The shop­per needs inte­grated SMS acti­va­tion and reten­tion hooks,” he said. “Focus­ing on the browser with inte­grat­ing loca­tion APIs and rich media caching will enable the browser to behave more like a down­loaded app and drive more com­merce adop­tion long-term.

“HTML5 will ulti­mately be the demise of the app as a main­stream com­merce medium. Apple knows this and is ret­i­cent to push in-browser func­tion­al­ity which would can­ni­bal­ize its app-dom.”

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/commerce/6662.html