The mobile community has started to talk about how the tide is turning on App store mania and that the natural route forward is Web apps, HTML 5 and so on. Is this another example of wishful thinking - or is it reality? Isn't it actually all a bit more complicated than that, for example where does J2ME sit and doesn't that characterisation ignore the existence of Flash and Silverlight? What about Java FX?
In any case, is it even the main problem? While the technology related issues are of course important, isn't there a more fundamental issue relating to how real people actually use these mobile devices and services and the UI design required to deliver this? Differences in interaction styles and form factors challenge the idea of producing a single UI design for the various classes of phone, let alone when you take into account tablets, laptops, game consoles and so on.
Kindly hosted by Windows Phone at the Microsoft Offices in Victoria, and with an introductory keynote by Alex Reeve, Director of Mobile at Microsoft, our brave panel will tackle this wide ranging topic that includes everything from consumer behaviour through to choice of developer SDKs.
Marek Pawlowski of PMN, and organiser of the famous MEX Conference will moderate the panel session. We will confirm speakers from a major content provider and a major online retailer shortly. Oded Ran from Microsoft will give us a platform vendor perspective and Ilia Uvarov from RG/A and Tom Hume of Future Platforms will bring the design and development perspectives. Nick Lansley of Tesco brings a major online retailer perspective and Jerry Ennis from Flirtomatic brings the mobile social angle.
Doors open at the usual time of 6.00 pm for a 6.30pm start at the Microsoft Conference Centre at 80 Victoria Street, London SW1E 5JL (map here). Networking drinks will follow the panel session and we're excited to hear that there will by a number of interesting devices on show during the networking as well.
Registration at http://momolo.org will open shortly and is essential. As you can imagine security is pretty tight there and pre-registration is required.
