• modern smartphones are equipped with a recent, state-of-the-art, JavaScript/CSS capable web browser
• modern smartphones are most often associated with a “always connected” data plan

What this means is that if you need to develop a mobile application that should run on several mobile platforms, you have basically two possibilities:

• learn each different platform and associated SDK, develop and maintain a different version for each of them, not to mention you’ll have to manage distribution/deployment
• write a single web app that will run on all platforms, and be always up-to-date

Easy choice isn’t it? Now I should also add a third fact that will undoubtedly contribute to this trend:

• GWT and GAE make it ridiculously easy to build web apps (including for mobiles)

For example, my new Palm Pre doesn’t come with a facebook app. Why bother? it’s just a link to the mobile version of facebook.com. Maybe it’s not as rich as a native app, but it’s damn close, and the line will get thinner and thinner as HTML5 spreads.

Actually, the Palm Pre is a very good example of this convergence, since the standard SDK uses JavaScript as the development language. So basically, each app on the Pre is a web app!

You can read Alex Nicolaou’s blog post on the Google mobile blog for another view on this subject.

We wanted to let all of you know that the Google Plugin for Eclipse 1.1.0 is now available. Some of the notable improvements are:
-Support for Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo)
-GWT RPC interface validation with quick fixes
- App Engine DataNucleus enhancer console no longer steals focus on save

Announcement, Relase Notes