ReadWriteMobile

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?

The allure of making millions, perhaps even billions, of dollars developing mobile apps for the consumer market is obvious. Instagram just got a cool $1 billion from Facebook. Path has a $250 million valuation. Even Twitter was started as a mobile, text messaging-based service.

Venture capitalists are always on the lookout for the Next Big Thing when it comes to consumer apps. But fledgling entrepreneurs may find a higher likelihood of creating a sustainable business and attracting VC dollars in the business-to-business (B2B) market.

The case pitting Google against Oracle over the use of Java in Android is turning into a spat of epic proportions. The opening arguments are in the books, with Google trying to portray Oracle as a spurned girlfriend trying to wrangle money out of a failed relationship. Oracle, meanwhile, painted Google as a callous ex-boyfriend who blithely takes what it wants, when it wants, with no regard for anyone else.

"Backend as a Service" (BaaS) companies provide easily integrated cloud-based backends for mobile app developers. Though not as well known as Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS), the BaaS ecosystem has quickly evolved from a niche vertical into an important industry segment.

The industry segment took another step toward maturity this week with mobile development platform Appcelerator's announcement of its Titanium 2.0 SDK, with significant backend cloud services tied into it. Meanwhile, Boston-based mobile cloud provider Kinvey also released its platform to the public.

If you have been using various forms of wired data connections, you might want to take a closer look at the various 4G wireless networks and their phones.

Based on informal tests here at ReadWriteWeb and more extensive tests elsewhere, going wireless now could be a way to speed up your Internet connection!

The two-year-long legal battle between Google and Oracle began its final confrontation today in San Francisco district court. At stake in the eight-week showdown? The future of the Java programming language and Android, the world's most popular smartphone operating system. That's not all.

It was dinner at a fancy restaurant in Boston. After the last sip of Scotch was polished off, the waiter came over with the check... and an iPad. It was to take a survey about the quality of service, but it just as easily could have been used to pay the bill.

Tablets, especially Apple's iPad, are increasingly finding homes in restaurants and local businesses. They are changing how businesses conduct transactions and receive customer feedback. In a data-driven world, Main Street retailers are on the verge of a significant evolution.

The nature of work has been changed by the mobile phone. This is an undisputable fact. It's also a fact that organizations and enterprises have not always coped well with this revolution.

The early stages of mobility in the workplace were fairly simple: A couple top executives had private cellphones with numbers that only the most important people could reach. The wall between the C-suite and the rest of enterprises began to erode with the rise of the BlackBerry, as mobile email became pervasive through the entire corporate structure. But we're still waiting for the next step.

One of the largest software companies in the world just made a series of moves that could make it one of the most powerful enterprise mobile developers in the world. Hidden within SAP's Hana database platform announcement yesterday was the fact that the company signed three strategic partnerships with leading U.S. mobile development firms, signaling what could be a huge shift in the balance of power in the race for enterprise mobile dollars.

App updates may not seem like a big deal. Sure, they fix bugs and provide fun stuff like new features and enhanced user interfaces. But they can also patch potentially serious security holes.

Case in point: a recent Facebook vulnerability found in the company's Android software developer kit (SDK). A developer for San Francisco-based mobile cloud service provider Parse stumbled across some peculiar activity in his code and did some digging. As it turns out, that code could have been extraordinarily painful for developers, users, Facebook and any app that uses its SDK. Only an app update could keep that from happening.