Will HTML 5 spell the end of the app?

Imagine a world without apps. Now, stop imagining it. It's coming, and faster than you might think.

As hard as it is to believe that it's been barely three years since the first successful online app store was launched, it's even harder to believe that 2012 could mark the beginning of the end of the app as we know it.

To be fair, the numbers suggest otherwise: Apple's iOS App Store now counts close to 600,000 apps in inventory, has served up over 18 billion downloads since going live, has raked in over $4.2 billion in aggregate revenue and paid out 70 percent of that, or about $3 billion, to developers.

If it were valued as a standalone entity, the App Store would be worth an estimated $7 billion U.S., and has evolved into an invincible force of software, a high-tech economy in its own right. It has challenged — and in many cases destroyed — longtime industry assumptions and has rewritten how code is created, distributed, paid for and used.

It's big business that continues to grow seemingly exponentially. So it's easy to assume this juggernaut will continue unchallenged.

Don't assume. As with all major transitions in distribution, they start with a scoff-worthy prediction and usually, surprisingly, end with a new world order. In the app worlds of Apple's iOS, Google Android, Microsoft's Windows Phone and RIM's BlackBerry, that small seed of revolution begins with one word: HTML5.

The fifth major specification of the HyperText Markup Language that defines how web-based content is built is light years removed from HTML 1.0. That initial version dates back to the World Wide Web's birth in 1991, and largely defined the web experience for the commercial Internet that most of us began using through that decade.

Back then, HTML was a pretty simple beast, resulting in static web pages that didn't do a whole lot more than display text, some links and perhaps a graphic or two. If you wanted flashy interactive multimedia, video or anything remotely sophisticated, you bought a box of software and installed it on your PC.

As the HTML specification, or spec, evolved through versions 2, 3 and 4, it became a lot more capable — and app-like. Pages and sites written to the updated standards became more interactive as they integrated newfound abilities to dynamically update content without forcing a manual page refresh with every mouse click or keyboard entry. Fuelled by these improved standards as well as by faster broadband networks, sophisticated web-based applications like email, mapping and productivity software became more common.

The shift toward mobile apps doesn't change this evolution: It simply extends the venues where it all plays out, with the web becoming an ever more sophisticated delivery method on any PC, smartphone, tablet or related device. The only difference here is that mobile devices have typically had less capable web browsers on them, and they haven't always had unimpeded access to the web that the typical desktop or laptop does. So downloadable apps have stepped into the void to provide immersive experiences that don't go dark when a 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi connection isn't available.

HTML5 changes the game yet again, allowing web apps — on full-sized PC-based browsers and smartphones and tablets alike — to behave close to any conventionally installed software. HTML5 also lets web apps perform more capably even when they're cut off from the Internet — an important capability for subway commuters who'd otherwise be out of luck as soon as they head underground.

HTML5 changes the game for developers, too, as it allows them to get more bang for their investment buck. Today, creating a new version of the same title for more than one kind of mobile device often requires an entirely new project. Incompatibilities between Apple iOS, Google Android and RIM BlackBerry platforms, for example, mean developers typically have to use completely different tools and skill sets to create similar functionality on various devices. HTML5 allows the same web-based application to be delivered to any device that supports the new standard. This write-once, run-anywhere methodology has long driven the conventional web, and is now set to do the same in the mobile space, too.

Adobe saw the writing on the wall earlier this year when it announced plans to kill its Adobe Mobile Flash offering and redirect its efforts to HTML5-based projects. When closed-system stalwarts like Adobe shift their business models so radically, it's clear this is far more than a superficial transition.

Apple, Google and their related competitors won't take this lying down, of course. HTML5's potential is a direct threat to their rapidly-growing app store revenue streams, and heralds the prospect of losing control over developers, who will no longer have to fork over 30 percent of every sale for the right to sell through their particular online shelf space. The return to a more open, free-for-all software distribution model will force Apple et al to shift their own app store business methodologies in turn. If they don't, growth will inevitably flatten out and eventually reverse as consumers realize they don't need to download code to get stuff done. They can simply run it right off the web.

As provocative as it sounds, the app isn't a permanent fixture on smartphones, tablets and related mobile devices any more than earlier packages of distributed value were. Just as music has survived the transition from wax cylinder to vinyl to tape to CD to downloadable formats, the ability to do unique things on our computing devices is evolving, too, from pre-Internet-era cassette and floppy disks to CDs and DVDs and, finally, to downloadable apps.

But the downloadable app's dominance won't last forever. While there will always be a certain need for app stores and the individually downloaded packages that they offer, the rise of HTML5 could easily threaten the app's hegemony as it tilts power away from the industry giants that have used apps to fuel their own mobile platform dreams.

There may yet be an app for that in the year to come, but the era of who wins based on how big their respective app stores have become is slowly drawing to a close.

Carmi Levy is a London, Ont.-based independent technology analyst and journalist. carmilevy@yahoo.ca