>>>Browser is not a natural decision for business apps on a mobile device- which is why banks, online travel agents, ebay and others are all offering native apps rather than pushing their traditional web interface. It was fine for desktops that usually used a network under the customer's direct control, but mobile devices are distributed by telephony providers who encourage customers to use the provider's data network and once hooked into that, it's hard to go back. Outages are to be expected and are tolerable- unless you're using a browser app that may crash or lose work if an inconvenient outage strikes at a bad moment. Customers won't put up with it, especially if somebody else is doing it properly.
>
>Agreed.
>What is more likely tho.. that someone will solve the browser issue and offer a universal solution, or that we will wind up with a bunch of disparate apps that depend on the whim of someone like Apple, Amazon, Google etc.?
>
>I expect that it will be the former. Today's browser is a lot richer than its progenitors and it's not hard to imagine a browser that's as stable as a desktop.

The missing piece - SQL table caching and local storage - planned as webSQL,
was IMHO delibarety torpedoedmostly by Oracle, partly by MS and the other players.
Read up on the decision to replace it with key-value storage and the need for objects client side.
Then check who those experts involved in the decision work for in their day job...

So I am less optimistic, as the Gears API is falling out of focus.

my 0.0001 (no big biz)€

thomas