On January 11 we announced the winner of the HTML5 App Challenge – Journalism.co.uk – now available on the AppsFuel store. The app was developed by Webcrumbz and, as a result of their victory, they are now a finalist at the prestigious Mobile Premier Awards being held today in Barcelona. We thought it would be interesting to publish this chat we had with Ciprian Borodescu, the CEO of Webcumbz.
What does “HTML5” mean for you and what is, in your opinion, the role of this language in the present and the future of mobile content?
HTML5 is a technology that allows developers to build rich web-based apps that run on any device via a standard web browser.
Although HTML5 has been well known among web developers for years, it became the topic of mainstream media around April 2010 after Apple's then CEO Steve Jobs issued a public letter entitled, "Thoughts on Flash," where he concludes that "new open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win".
But there’s also a more profound aspect to HTML5: openness of the Web, which basically means building web applications and publish them without anyone’s approval.
In June 2011, Financial Times launched a HTML5 web app that enabled their readers to access content across tablets and smartphones, bypassing Apple’s App Store and their 30% cut of in-app subscriptions.
Next, Amazon launched Kindle Cloud Reader a few months later allowing readers to enjoy books directly from the cloud or to download them for offline reading thanks to the magic of HTML5.
This obviously raised a lot of interest in the publishing industry, especially considering the fact that Financial Times managed to attract 1M users on their HTML5 web app in a couple of months after their launch, proving that this can be a viable alternative to the closed environment of the native apps.
Following their example, other publishing companies such as TheBanker, NYTimes and TheAtlanticWire embraced HTML5 as a way of targeting their mobile audience as well.
Having the above as inspiration, we’ve built Appticles.com with the goal of helping small and medium publishers to better reach and target their mobile audience by creating, distributing and monetizing mobile HTML5 applications.
Because we’re focusing on browser-based applications we believe that HTML5 is the key to providing our publishers with new ways of monetizing their content on mobile and tablet devices, eliminating the 30% shared revenue constraints they usually encounter on native app stores.
What are the benefits you would like to gain through AppsFuel and what role AppsFuel can play in the future of web apps for the developers?
On Appticles.com it’s not all about creating the mobile web application itself, there’s also the aspect of distributing & monetizing it. That’s where we believe the partnership with Appsfuel.com can bring a lot of value to our publishers.
By integrating with Appsfuel.com, we allow our publishers to immediately distribute their mobile web application to potentially a larger number of readers.
As far as we’re concerned, we’re seeing Appsfuel.com as the “de facto” place to be for HTML5 applications, heavily contributing to the proliferation of the web apps on mobile and tablet devices.
On 2012, at the 21st International World Wide Web Conference, Tim Berners-Lee campaigned for the development of web apps - open mobile web apps - applications created with HTML5 and accessible from any browser on any system. He urged the developers in the room: “The solution is in your hands: develop web apps, not apps!”
As a developer, having Appsfuel.com as your ally/partner, Tim Berners-Lee’s call becomes more and more powerful and the need of having an alternative in the mobile space may just as well be solved with HTML5.
Thanks for your time and best of luck for the Mobile Premier Awards!
It was my pleasure, and we're hoping for the best!
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Still reading? Why not join the HTML5 mobile app revolution and, who knows, maybe next year we'll be interviewing YOU for your prize-winning mobile web app! Get started here, sign up here to the AppsFuel Developer zone.