It wasn't taken seriously then and Steve Jobs likely wasn't serious about it either the native app development kit just wasn't available for several months. No doubt many of you are thinking of how the mobile web was the original public vision for iPhone app development back in 2007. Safari and the Webkit engine have fallen far behind on these standards, likely a symptom of Apple's interest in keeping the browser weak. Already with Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 8.1 I use a lot of web sites that work fine, including Google Maps. Microsoft doesn't want to talk about this they want to talk about Universal Windows Apps, which are a good and interesting thing, but not as significant as the mobile web could be. They're not as far along as Google is with Chrome, but their Edge strategy seems to be to ape Chrome, so I'm encouraged. With Edge, Microsoft is making a browser that is in a better position to support these sites. The main impediment to this development is Apple and their huge financial stake in their market for native apps, in-app purchases and advertising.Already there are plenty of web sites that perform as well as native apps on mobile devices.Using techniques already in Chrome on Android, the user can have a native app experience with the mobile web.A mobile web site is advantageous for developers and users.Google is strongly behind this standards push.This is not the way things are right now many of the standards are not implemented yet, but I believe they will be. HTML/JS/DOM standards for web browsers are advancing rapidly to the point nearly everything you'd want to do in a native app you'll be able to do on a mobile web site.I recently wrote a large feature on this in Ars Technica, but here are the highlights: The first is the more important one: The build-out of the mobile web will diminish the significance of native apps. There are many reasons I could cite for why Windows Phone still might have a future, but I'll focus on two. Microsoft's attempts to break through with its Lumia smartphones have not gone well, so where does it go next?

Microsoft and mobile: The headache that won't go away

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