ReadWriteMobile

It is one thing to say that apps built in HTML5 function across every device on the market. It is another thing to run those apps. 

Last September, during the f8 Developers’ Conference, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor said that the company had no plans for a “central app repository” – an app store. Today, Facebook is changing its tune. The social giant has announced App Center, a section of Facebook dedicated to discovering and deploying high-quality apps on the company’s platform. The App Center will push apps to iPhone, Android and the mobile Web, giving Facebook its first true store for mobile app discovery. 

Apple seems able to do no wrong. In its most recent fiscal quarter, the giant consumer electronics maker posted a 59% increase in sales and a whopping 94% rise in profits. Such stellar numbers disguise the possibility that Apple’s near future may not be so prosperous, particularly if it falters in China.

AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the nation’s two largest wireless carriers, intend to market the heck out of Microsoft Windows Phone to prevent Apple from gaining a stranglehold on the U.S. smartphone market. But the strategy has many pitfalls, including the fact that the carriers still can’t afford to live without the iPhone. Bottom line, their love-hate relationship with Apple isn’t ending any time soon.

Even as the battle rages over native apps vs. the mobile Web, the real question is already becoming "What comes next?" Developers are looking for ways to disrupt the so-called "App Economy," especially as it pertains to Apple's handling of the App Store. Assuming that the mobile Web's cross-platform openness carries the day, as it has so many times before, what would such a mobile "Post-App Economy" look like and what would it offer for developers and users?

Since Research In Motion made BlackBerry synonymous with smartphones in the early aughts, the company has taken a pounding for mis-steps, delays, intentional blindness, equivocations and most tellingly, mediocre products.

Those brickbats have often been well-deserved, but RIM should also have earned some respect, if not love, for the important role it played in smartphone development and popularization - not to mention a string of iconic-at-the-time devices that significantly advanced the state of the art.

Imagine playing a game of Scrabble on your iPhone against your mother. You and Ma are competitive and these games tend to turn into rabid battles for literary supremacy. Also, she's your mother so you want to talk about how things are with the family, your nephew and if Pa is taking that new job in Chicago. So, you press a button in the app and create a voice connection running over your data connection. No dialing, no minutes used. Just a data connection straight from the app.

Cloud communications company Twilio is making that possible. Today it is announcing a new native iOS software developer kit for its Twilio Client, allowing voice-over-IP calls from any app. The future of telephony is in data connections, not wireless minutes and Twilio is looking to make the mobile carriers' networks programmable for the next generation of app developers.

Whenever user privacy comes into question, the reaction is predictable. The tech media will flare up with outrageous and accusatory headlines, the mainstream media will pick up on it and put a couple talking heads on air to decry the practice and users will start talking in bars about how "company xyz" is spying on them. If we are lucky, the controversy will get tech writers sniping at each other and there will be a Congressional investigation.

Everybody is armed, forces are deployed and the battleground is chosen. Let's get this thermonuclear war started.

2011 was the year that the major mobile platform providers loaded up with ammunition in the upcoming world war between Apple, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Google. Apple acquired patents from Novell while the "Rock Star" group of RIM, Microsoft and Apple won the majority of Nortel's patents. Google went big and bought everything that Motorola owned. We know all of this already. But, that was just the staging area. The real test will be in 2012. On Monday, the United States Department of Justice approved all of those acquisitions in one fell swoop.

Steve Jobs promised to go "thermonuclear" on Android over patent violations. That seems to be a dying wish that Apple is willing to pursue. Now that the big guns are out, what will be the consequence to the mobile ecosystem? Will the arms race force a détente, powerful patent portfolios canceling each other out? Or is this the beginning of disruptive lawsuits that ultimately becomes harmful to consumers looking for choice?

If there were any uncertainty that Google's acquisition of Motorola would be approved by regulatory agencies across the world, one only has to look at the fourth quarter of 2011 to see why it never was in danger. The last quarter of 2011 showed us which companies really control the smartphone market and Motorola was certainly not one of them. Between Apple and Samsung, the two behemoths controlled 95% of mobile phone profits worldwide, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley.

The pincer formation at the top of the ecosystem means that no regulatory agency can deny Google its $12.5 billion purchase. Life has also become extremely difficult for all the other OEMs and mobile platforms trying to make a dent in the market. If you are not making an iDevice or some type of Galaxy product, Apple and Samsung are squeezing you out of the market. The clock is ticking.