Google Gears up for mobile apps
Posted on March 13, 2008
Filed Under Vnunet |
Ian Williams, vnunet.com,
Thursday 13 March 2008 at 00:00:00
Browser plug-in lets users work on and offline
Google has released the first mobile version of its Google Gears web browser
plug-in which enables the use of rich mobile applications online and offline.
Google Gears enables offline access to web applications by allowing them to
cache data on the device through a SQLite-based database engine that
periodically synchronises with the service when connected to the internet. The
initial version of Google Gears for mobile is intended for use with Internet
Explorer Mobile on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices. Google said that this mobile
version is a port of the desktop version of Google Gears v0.2. The plug-in
enables developers of mobile applications to create software for deployment on
mobile browsers rather than the phone itself, which adds a number of
compatibility issues to the mix. Google claimed that there are already a
handful of web apps that use Google Gears for mobile, such as personal finance
service Buxfer and online applications provider Zoho. Google is also working on
brining Gears for mobile to Android and other mobile platforms with web
browsers. Analysts have praised the release, saying that, along with similar
platforms released by other mobile developers, it heralds a new era for rich
mobile applications. “Amid last week’s fanfare surrounding the launch of
Microsoft’s multimedia-centric Silverlight RMA platform for Nokia’s mobile
device platforms and its own Windows Mobile, Google Gears mobile slipped out
rather quietly,” said Tony Cripps, senior analyst at Ovum. “Together they
demonstrate many of the important features of rich mobile applications, namely
graphically rich presentation, lightweight programming models and disconnected
working. The growing installed base for these technologies on mobile devices
will make them obvious targets for future RMAs, whether launched by media
companies, webcos, enterprises or operators, according to Cripps. This will
increasingly be at the expense of proprietary client technologies, such as
those offered by so-called on-device portal vendors. “The launch of the first
version of Google Gears for mobile may have been low key but it is another
important foundation stone in bringing the web and mobile closer together,”
said the analyst.
 |
 |
Comments
Leave a Reply
