The rise of Webkit

Webkit, the browser engine for Apple's browser Safari, has had an incredible six months.

• First, the iPhone - the first mobile device with proper internet access that people like to use, based on Webkit
• Safari was released for Windows, and bundled with iTunes, ensuring a huge distribution
• Webkit is the foundation for Google's new mobile platform, Android, which will surely be massive next year
• Nokia uses Webkit for its Series 60 browser in its flagship smartphones
• The KHTML open source Linux developers announced they are merging back in to Webkit

From a standing start of 3% of browser market share at the start of the year, Safari is already up to more than 5%. I wouldn't be surprised if it reached 15% by the end of 2008, if its momentum (and Apple's) continues.

This is great for the internet. A popular open source project, a keen proponent of existing and forthcoming standards such as HTML5 and CSS3, the ability to innovate rapidly (including recently CSS animations and transformations!)

Good luck to Webkit for next year.

2008: the mobile web

My prediction for 2008: it'll be the year of the mobile internet, the year when it suddenly became obvious that mobiles need the same access to the web as any other device.

All the major device manufacturors will release businesses based on this idea:

• Apple, with the iPhone and perhaps a new slimline tablet Mac using Webkit, the open source browser engine
• Google, with the rollout of Android, their mobile platform using Webkit
• Nokia, with their Symbian smartphones such as the N95 becoming a major part of their business, using Webkit
• Mozilla, with their new mobile version of Firefox

In addition, there's the eagerly awaited spectrum auction in the US, the continued rollout of HSDPA mobile network speeds across the world, and moves around the world towards open network access.

Even on the internet, businesses have to be planned several quarters in advance, and the four players above have been scrambling to execute during 2008. That will widen the gap with those still working on their current businesses, chief among them Microsoft.

2008 will be the year that companies stopped spending time developing java-based mobile applications. They'll just post them on the web, and attract mobile users to browse to them instead. During 2008, we'll see the first mainstream mobile internet sites for

• Address Book, SMS and Calendar
• Music and Video players
• Social Networking
• Email

In other words, we'll see Silicon Valley catch up with the new opportunities presented by fast network access and sophisticated, easy to use devices.

Microsoft's Internet Strategy

Microsoft is in a bind. It's just not competing with internet companies in search or advertising. It's having to compete against free and ever-improving open source applications like Firefox and Apache. Due to issues such as lack of standards compliance e.g. CSS, the company has lost its good reputation with web developers. It seems to be fighting too many battles, and hasn't convinced with its new suite of online applications, Live, which anyway could cannibalize some of its most profitable products.

Most of all, Microsoft hasn't figured out how to capture the internet wave. It's being totally left behind on the web.

I'd like to propose a solution. It's a web solution, and one that plays to values that Microsoft has always understood - "developers, developers, developers".

Why not offer a web-based version of Visual Studio - call it Developer Live - that hosts web applications? Go the whole hog - different language choices, bug databases, software configuration management, test environments on the fly, GUI design tools. Charge by memory & processor usage, with reduced rates for students.

This strategy takes advantage of their incredible expertise for development tools and server systems.

The market is enormous - every application in the world! It avoids open source, which can never pay for massive data centers. It builds a whole new developer ecosystem, and no-one else (except maybe Amazon) seems to be thinking about it.

Microsoft would then offer three things - apps (e.g. Office), development (Developer Live), and clients (e.g. XBox / Vista). That's much cleaner than today's sprawl. And most importantly, they would regain clear leadership of the most important platform in the world - the web.