The web represents one of the biggest triumphs of individual freedom and openness over corporate control.

Now corporations have found a way to roll back that openness. One of of the most successful? Apple, whose quarterly earnings report lands later today.

Amazon, Facebook, and Google are close behind, but nobody has the leverage Apple does. That’s why I think Apple’s long-term revenue possibilities are strong. It’s also why Apple, and those who are busy emulating it, represent a dire threat to the open flow of information.

Openness vs. central control

As Tim Wu argued in his 2011 book The Master Switch, new technologies — the phone system, radio, television — go through several phases. There’s an initial phase of experimentation during which the technologies prove themselves. Then there’s a flowering of alternatives in the market as dozens or hundreds of companies sprout up and grow rapidly to seize previously nonexistent market opportunities. That corresponds with a sense of optimism about the technologies’ potential to change the world and democratize communication.

Eventually, however, market forces and aggressive executives concentrate power — and regulatory control — in a few giants.

AT&T is the classic example: In the early years of the 20th century, hundreds of local and regional phone systems existed, serving small markets in idiosyncratic ways. Eventually, AT&T assimilated them all, bringing the entire phone system under the control of a single, centralized, autocratic monopoly.

That kind of central control is terrific for reliability (you could call anyone in the country — or the world — and get a crisp, clear connection) but terrible for prices and for innovation. It was only with the forced breakup of AT&T’s monopoly that phone rates started to come down.

Similar cycles of openness followed by consolidation followed the appearance of radio and television technologies. But the web, in some ways, is an amazing exception.

For three decades, HTTP (which Paul Ford called “the Web’s operating system”) and HTML have proven to be resilient, flexible tools for interconnecting people and machines, facilitating communication in the most decentralized way imaginable. Anyone can publish a web page to a server on the Internet, and within seconds it is readable by anyone in the world who has the address and a browser capable of rendering HTML.

What’s more, anyone can link to any page on the Web without having to ask permission and without having to worry about what hardware or software delivers that page. All you need is a URL — another widely accepted, well-defined standard for interconnecting information.

If you can’t beat the web, go around it

Now, however, there’s a threat to this openness. It’s called the app store.

Technically, it’s not just the store: It’s the entire ecosystem of apps, content, hardware, and software. Apple perfected the model, and it has transformed the company into one of the most profitable corporations in the world. Even though its share price has plummeted in recent months, Apple is still in a very strong position thanks to the leverage that this ecosystem gives it. Indeed, that position is so strong that Apple continues to generate profits even though its market share among mobile devices is shrinking.

Apple’s model is so successful that others are emulating it. Amazon, as I’ve written before, is perhaps best-positioned to create a similarly integrated ecosystem. Amazon sells content (TV, movies, music, books, news) and apps; it also sells a popular Android tablet that is tied tightly into its own app store as well as its shopping cart for physical goods. 

Others are still in the running, though. Google has an app store, software, and its own hardware, but its ecosystem is less tightly controlled because Google also has to work with dozens of hardware manufacturers — the companies who actually make most Android devices, led by Samsung — who have their own agendas.

Facebook is trying to enfold its customers more and more deeply into its own world, starting with its own quasi-open web standard called Open Graph (really just a markup language aimed at making it easier to share text, audio, and video within Facebook) and, lately, extending to its own Android app, Facebook Home, that takes over your phone and turns it into a virtual Facebook phone.

Microsoft, of course, has lots of leverage with the Windows ecosystem, and while it’s coming from far behind in mobile, it might have a shot with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 — but it’s too soon to say how well this will work.

But nobody has all the pieces tied together quite as well as Apple.

What we lose when we use apps

The app approach is working: 80 percent of the time people spend with their smartphones and tablets is spent using apps, not the web browser.

Apps provide a better experience for end users, in many cases, because their performance is better. They’re better-optimized for the screen and for other specific capabilities the device has. And for many publishers, it’s easier to make money from an app, whose experience enfolds the end-user and keeps them contained within an environment of the app publisher’s designing.

With the web, by contrast, users keep escaping to other sites — there’s no wall around the garden. That’s why many mobile sites have those obnoxious popups that encourage you to download the publisher’s mobile app. For these companies, the mobile site’s best use is as marketing tool for the app.

But here’s the problem: Apps are difficult to connect to one another. There’s no universally accepted way to link to a specific page or location within an app. (Many apps don’t even have pages.) To connect with an app, you need to use its application programming interface (API), assuming it has one, or the API of the device it’s running on. Naturally, that API differs from device to device. Making app-to-app connections is far more difficult than linking to a URL because you need to be a programmer to do it.

The difficulty of integrating apps with one another was one of the topics I heard executives discuss, in passing, at VentureBeat’s recent Mobile Summit. I’ll be honest, though, it wasn’t one of the event’s top themes. It matters the most to enterprise IT architects, for whom it’s a hassle as they try to tie together various apps that their employees use.

For big companies and carriers, app-to-app connections aren’t important. They’re too busy trying to build their own ecosystems.

Most entrepreneurs don’t care about the ease of integrating apps: They just want to make their own apps popular and figure out how to make money from them. And for consumers, this issue is not even on the radar screen.

That’s why I’m not optimistic about the future of the open web, particularly on mobile: There are huge companies with a large incentive to bypass it, and very few who have enough of a problem with it to register any opposition.

We may just look back on the past 30 years as a strange and happy interregnum between eras of corporate control. Enjoy it while you can.

Image credit: Phil Aaronson/Flickr

Gizmox, a startup making HTML5 and mobile web tools for business applications, has closed a $7.5 million round of financing and selected a new CEO.

The startup offers what is says is a streamlined solution to help companies shift from a traditional client-server to mobile web and HTML5 technologies. Although many consumer applications have already implemented a move to mobile web and HTML5, complex business apps have faced a harder transition.

Gizmox provides an enterprise-class HTML 5 platform using two components: VisualWebGUI, a mobile HTML5 framework for enterprise applications, and InstantCloudMove, which creates cloud-based HTML5 from existing client-server code.

The financing round was led by Atlas Ventures, with participation from Citrix, Consolidated Investment Group, and Maayan Ventures.

With the announcement of the financing round, Gizmox has also named a new CEO, Eugene Kuznetsov, and transitioned co-founder and former CEO Navot Peled to president. Kuznetsov brings a deep background to Gizmox; he was a founder and president of DataPower, a startup that was acquired by IBM. Kuznetsov completed a stint as an IBM executive and also co-founded Abine, an online privacy company.

The addition of Kuznetsov is expected to accelerate the company’s sales and marketing efforts as the transition of business applications to mobile and HTML5 becomes more prevalent.

The $7.5 million of financing brings the total funding raised by Gizmox to $18 million.

Gizmox was founded in 2007 and is based in Cambridge, Mass.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Only a few weeks after hitting 50 million users, the popular mobile messaging service Kik has received a new chunk of funding to fuel its impressive growth.

Kik announced today that it has raised $19.5 million in a second round of funding led by Foundation Capital. It’s a significant step beyond Kik’s existing $8 million funding, but Ted Livingston, the company’s founder and chief executive, isn’t letting it get to his head.

“For us it’s a step along the way,” he said in an interview with VentureBeat last week. “What’s most exciting for us is leading the HTML5 revolution — the money is just like a checkbox.”

Kik offers cross-platform mobile messaging apps for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone, but the company’s most recent focus has been on HTML5-powered apps within the core Kik client, which the company calls “Cards.” So far the company has Cards for things like watching YouTube, browsing Reddit, or sketching with your friends. Since they’re HTML5-based, Kik can add new Cards and update them across all platforms without waiting for app store approval.

And of course, the Cards helpfully keep users within Kik’s app. As of a few weeks ago, Kik’s users have installed more than 25 million Cards so far. Livingston sees a future for monetizing within Kik’s Cards via advertisements and mobile shopping, while he hopes to keep the core messaging service a “pure” experience.

Kik is also adding Foundation Capital partner Anamitra Banerji to its board of directors, who also led Twitter’s monetization efforts, including promoted tweets and promoted trends. At this point, Livingston believes he’s an excellent fit to help Kik monetize as well.

The company will use the funding to building up Kik’s infrastructure and hire people for its ambitious HTML5 project (and similar far-reaching endeavors). Kik currently has less than 30 employees, but Livingston is gung-ho about expanding if he finds the right candidates: “If we could hire 30 engineers tomorrow and they’re all brilliant, we’d hire all of them,” he told me.

Livingston wasn’t too worried about the threat of Kik’s main competitor, Whatsapp, when we chatted a few weeks ago:

They’re much bigger today, but they have much weaker network effects. They’re not a product company … half their users are on crappy feature phones. They’re waking up to this idea that it was all about the messenger, but now it’s about the platform around the messenger. … They’re in no position to compete at the platform level.

Kik currently only has one office in Waterloo, Ontario, but Livingston says he hopes to expand with more offices in places like New York, Berlin, and San Francisco as the company becomes more of a platform.

LinkedIn has just launched the latest versions of its mobile apps, and in a stunning reversal, it’s gone from mobile web-based apps back to fully native.

Less than a year ago, the company was touting its iPad app as fully mobile-web based, with just one screen, the homescreen, running natively. Now, all that’s gone, as is some of the optimism about the current capabilities of the mobile web.

In a revealing chat with Kiran Prasad (pictured), LinkedIn’s senior director for mobile engineering, we learned exactly why — and it’s not what you think. Prasad said performance issues weren’t causing crashes or making the app run slowly. What he did say shows that HTML5 for the mobile web still has a bright future — but only if developers are willing to build the tools to support it.

Related HTML5 coverage:

PRO: 90 percent of developers plan to use HTML5 this year.

CON: 80 percent of people’s mobile time is spent in apps, not the browser.

Here’s the bulk of our chat with Prasad on engineering topics around the new apps:

VentureBeat: [interrupting interview about the app launch] Wait, let’s go back a second. Did you just say these apps are native? Isn’t that the exact opposite of where you guys were philosophically the last time we talked about mobile?

Prasad: We have definitely shifted from HTML5 to native. The primary reason for that is, we’re seeing that more and more people are spending more time in the app, and the app is running out of memory. It’s not performance issues, like speed or rendering, but it’s still a big problem.

The second reason we’ve gone native is trying to get some of the animations — the spinners and the way they work — getting that smoothness, we felt like we needed native to really do that well.

VentureBeat: Does this mean that LinkedIn is giving up on developing mobile web apps or working with mobile web technologies?

Prasad: The way we built our system, we used template JSONs. We always have to support HTML5 because so much of our traffic comes from email. When we were [serving] a smaller group [of users], we were hoping we could duplicate all that mobile web work to make our clients faster in terms of code deploys. It worked really well when mobile only made up 8 to 10 percent of traffic. … I’m not sure I could have predicted it, but we recognize now that HTML5 is not allowing us to do the best for our users.

VentureBeat: So what would it take for mobile web technologies to meet the needs of a company like LinkedIn and with apps as widely used as yours?

Prasad: There are a few things that are critically missing. One is tooling support — having a debugger that actually works, performance tools that tell you where the memory is running out.

If you look at Android and iOS, there are two very large corporations that are focused on building tools to give a lot of detailed information when things go wrong in production. On the mobile web side, getting those desktop tools to work for mobile devices is really difficult.

The second big chunk we are struggling with is operability, runtime diagnostics information. Even now, when we build HTML5, we build it as a client-side app. It’s more of a client-server architecture. … The operability of that, giving us information when we’re distributed to a large volume of users, there aren’t as many great tools to support that, as well.

[Prasad also noted that dev and ops tools for solving issues quickly "don't exist."]

Because those two things don’t exist, people are falling back to native. It’s not that HTML5 isn’t ready; it’s that the ecosystem doesn’t support it. … There are tools, but they’re at the beginning. People are just figuring out the basics.

Image credit: Kirin Prasad/Twitter

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Netflix has unveiled the first details of a long-term strategy to shift towards using HTML5 for its web-based video playback.

Netflix, which owns about one third of the market for prime-time Web streaming video, far ahead of competitors like Amazon Prime and Hulu, currently uses Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin for video playback. That’s in contrast to many other video services, which use Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime, or other services to play video within their web pages. However, Microsoft has announced plans to wind down Silverlight by 2021. That means Netflix — and anyone else relying on Silverlight — has eight years to find an alternative.

HTML5 is a promising, if somewhat half-cooked, alternative. The open web standard, while widely hyped, proved disappointing to many developers in 2012, failing to live up to expectations for cross-platform support, performance, and other issues. But while mobile consumers spend far more time in apps than in their mobile browsers, HTML5 still has potential as the underlying rendering framework used within apps. Also, developers like HTML5, as does the guy who invented the Web.

And fortunately for Netflix, HTML5-based solutions that meet Netflix’s requirements are in the pipeline. Chief among those requirements are the need for content encryption and copy restriction (aka digital rights management, or DRM), “a requirement for any premium subscription video service,” the Netflix blog post drily notes. The W3C’s Encrypted Media Extensions specification provides just that support, Netflix says. In addition, the Web Cryptography API (also from the W3C) gives Netflix programming tools for encrypting and decrypting data, and for digitally signing content and verifying customers’ identities, which are also needed for the delivery of DRM-restricted video.

Finally, the W3C’s Media Source Extensions specification gives Netflix the ability to embed a video player in a web page, via the <video> tag, and also to control how to deliver audio and video to that player via its HTTP servers and content delivery network. It also gives Netflix the ability to switch to different servers in case one goes down, and to control the playback in various ways using JavaScript, which gives it flexibility to experiment.

“In addition, this allows us to implement our industry-leading adaptive streaming algorithms (real-time selection of audio/video bitrates based on available bandwidth and other factors) in our JavaScript code,” the blog post states.

These three key specifications aren’t completely baked yet, nor are they usable in most browsers, which is why Netflix isn’t quite ready to jump fully into the HTML5 pool. (Nor does it have to, given the long, eight-year sunset period for Silverlight.) Instead, it’s dipping its toes in the water, working with Google to implement support for its HTML5 player starting with the Chrome browser on Samsung’s ARM-based Chromebook.

Hat tip: Ars Technica

Photo: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings plans world domination, back in 2010. Credit: Ben Lucier/Flickr

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For nearly two decades, developers and CIOs have taken for granted the “simplicity” that a Windows-dominated world provided to software development. With one operating system capable of reaching the vast majority of users, there was no debate about which platform your software needed to run on. Nearly everyone ran Windows.

Then the iPhone happened, kicking off a wave of change that is forever altering the way software is built and delivered. Everyone involved in creating software (now called “apps”) must rethink how things are done. Add to that the impact of ending the Windows monoculture, and suddenly software development is in its infancy again.

Understandably, the industry is scrambling to find ways to deal with this complexity. How do you efficiently build and support software that needs to reach users running an unpredictable matrix of mobile and desktop operating systems (like iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, OS X, Windows)?

One of the most popular solutions to emerge out of the complexity is HTML5 (which is reall an umbrella term for a collection of web standard technologies evolving together, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
 

HTML5 is the only software runtime today that can be found on virtually every computing device with a screen. From computers to cars, HTML5 is the ubiquitous runtime, and the addition of powerful new APIs and capabilities over the last five years have made it much more able at handling the requirements of traditional “native” software development.

Done well — particularly with the aid of hybrid technologies that embed HTML5 in native app shells — the use of HTML5 is invisible to users. To developers and CIOs, though, the benefits are huge: one code base, one set of developer skills, one development and maintenance effort.

All of this begs an important question: If HTML5 and hybrid development can help simplify software development for a plurality of mobile operating systems, why stop there? Why not use those same techniques and leverage those same benefits for desktop development?

As it turns out, it’s already happening. Traditional desktop app development is the next frontier for leveraging the benefits of HTML5. Two kinds of solutions are driving the evolution of HTML5 past mobile and onto desktops: new operating systems that leverage HTML5 as a native app option and new packaging solutions that enable HTML5-powered apps to be “installed” on traditional desktop platforms, like Windows and Mac.

Google and Microsoft have been independently building the first kind of solution: Microsoft with Windows 8, and Google with Chrome OS. In both cases, the operating systems feature built-in support for using HTML5 to build, package, and deploy apps. In the case of Chrome OS, the entire operating system is HTML5 focused, while in Windows 8, Microsoft’s new modern UI offers HTML and JavaScript as a side-by-side option with native app development.

Meanwhile, another set of solutions aims to enable HTML5-powered apps that can run on any existing desktop. Google’s Chrome Packaged Apps will not only run on Chrome OS, but also on Windows, Mac, Linux, and anywhere else the Chrome runtime is found. A real “write once, run everywhere.” The popular Cordova (also known as PhoneGap) container used for hybrid mobile development may also soon find its way to the desktop. If it does, developers could leverage the same cross-platform packaging solution across all mobile and desktop operating systems.

In all cases, these are not “apps in a browser.” Apps created for desktop using these modern web standards packaging solutions look, feel, and integrate like any other native desktop app. To a user it’s transparent; to a developer, it closes the loop opened by mobile, enabling complete app strategies — from mobile to desktop to web — to leverage HTML5.

And before dismissing these solutions, thinking that desktop is dead, think again. A recent Kendo UI Global Developer Survey found that 60% of software development done with HTML5 is targeting desktops. Mobile devices may be on the rise, but desktops remain vitally important to information workers and those users need software.

Legacy native software development will never disappear completely, of course. Some applications will always need the extra freedom that writing natively affords. But the world is different now. Dealing with new complexities of software development requires a new approach. As the power of HTML5 and hybrid evolve, developers and CIOs would be mistaken to ignore the possibilities on desktop and limit the benefits to mobile.

Too good to be true? Perhaps. But the alternatives are too few and too bad to accept. The days of single platform (Windows) development are gone. The next dispensation for developers will revolve around writing software that runs across multiple platforms. Developers that embrace the full power and capability that HTML5 offers will not only simplify their mobile development strategy, but their entire development strategy. Desktop included.

Todd Anglin is executive vice president of cross platform tools and services at Telerik.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Only 20 percent of American consumers’ time on mobile devices is spent on the web. A massive majority, 80 percent, is spent in apps: games, news, productivity, utility, and social networking apps.

Turns out, it’s an app world, after all.

According to app analytics firm Flurry, which tracks app usage on a staggering 300,000 apps on over a billion active mobile devices, we spend an average of 158 minutes each and every day on our smartphones and tablets. Two hours and seven minutes of that is in an app, and only 31 minutes is in a browser, surfing the old-school web.

A big chunk of that 158 minutes is taken up with games — 32 percent — but it’s almost shocking to see how much time a single app and a single company eats up. Eighteen percent of all the time that Americans spend on their phones is spent in the Facebook app, a figure that by itself dwarfs all other social networking apps.

Combined, the others only take up six percent of our time.

There was a time when developers thought HTML5 would kill the mobile app, with experts like Mike Rowehl saying things like: “We’ll forget that we even passed through another era of native apps on the way to the mobile web.”

In an interesting twist, however, HTML5 is actually being used more as a tool for cross-platform native app development. In fact, it’s now the number one choice for developers building apps for multiple platforms.

Flurry also says that people are now using more apps than ever, launching 7.9 per day in the last part of 2012 versus 7.5 per day in 2011 and 7.2 per day in 2010. Consumers are continuing to try new apps as well, with long-term users adding new apps regularly to their existing stack.

“We believe that with consumers continuing to try so many new apps, the app market is still in early stages and there remains room for innovation as well as breakthrough new applications,” Flurry says.

Is the mobile web dead?

Not necessarily — we’re only five years into this ongoing mobile revolution. But today, people are talking with their taps, and they’re overwhelmingly choosing apps.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

How do you stand out from the plethora of messaging apps out there? For Chorus.im, it’s by aiming for something more than just a messaging app.

The company has developed a free HTML5-based messenger that works across every modern mobile device as well as any PC platform. Basically, it enables practically anyone to jump into a text chat — it’s not limited to specific platforms like iMessage and BlackBerry Messenger, and it doesn’t cut out desktop platforms like most other messaging apps.

Chorus.im is clearly laying down its loyalty in the never-ending HTML 5 vs. native app debate. Building a truly cross-platform messaging platform would be much more complicated with native mobile apps, and it would also mean it would have to build an entirely different experience for desktop users.

“We’re big believers in the potential of HTML5 in the long-term. We firmly believe that it will eventually become the primary channel to distribute and consume mobile apps,” said Chorus.im founder and chief executive Steve Tran.

Somewhat ironically, Chorus.im is actually launching mobile apps for iOS and Android today. HTML5 doesn’t yet offer push messaging capabilities, which is critical for a messaging platform. Still, Chorus.im’s core technology is entirely built on HTML5 — I jumped into a live chat with Tran on my desktop without signing into anything. Once HTML5 adds push messaging, it will no longer need to offer standalone mobile apps.

You can start group chats on Chorus.im simply by emailing or texting people on your contact list. The service also stores your offline messages and chat history (not surprising, since it runs entirely in the cloud).

So why another chat service? You can use Chorus.im as a sort of disposable texting service, like if you’re communicating with a Craigslist buyer and trying to keep your personal number private. It’s also a helpful way to start a chat with less tech savvy folks — they simply need to click a link in their e-mail to join in, no log-in required.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Chorus.im has raised $500,000 in angel funding, and it’s soon going to be in the market for a venture round.

Smartphone user photo via Takayuki/Shutterstock

Ludei is launching a technology that game developers can use to create 3D web-based games that can play across platforms.

The technology brings together HTML5, the lingua franca of the web, with 3D technology via the WebGL 3D standard. The result will be games that have fast native performance and 3D graphics, even though they can run in web browsers across a variety of mobile devices, said Joe Monastiero, the president of Ludei, which is based in San Francisco and has developers in Spain. The technology is a bridge that will help the makers of 3D console and PC games migrate to mobile.

“We are trying to jumpstart the 3D mobile web games market,” Monastiero said in an interview with GamesBeat. “We believe we now have everything you need to make a compelling game.”

The company plans to show technology demos this week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Ludei will support 3D game development via the open WebGL standard, which is the browser equivalent of OpenGL, the standard for deploying powerful 3D animated games across different platforms. Ludei launched its game development platform using a hybrid of HTML5 and faster technologies last year, but it only worked with two-dimensional games. Now the company is it can enable 3D rendering on its platform. And games made on Ludei can be published on iOS, Android, Nook, Chrome, FirefoxOS, Pokki, Intel AppUp, and Amazon.

Developers don’t have to worry about which devices currently have built-in 3D support to handle their complex, HTML5 mobile-animated games, Monastiero said. Ludei said that its HTML5 2D platform currently powers more than 200 iOS and Android games. The company has launched its own titles — iBasket, Sumon, and Slide Soccer — that people have downloaded more than 20 million times. This means that games that are created for Facebook, the web, or other platforms don’t have to be reworked just to run on mobile.

HTML5 on its own can run across a bunch of browsers, but it often runs too slowly for games. Monastiero’s company is basically giving it the help it needs to work properly, so that an HTML5 app works as if it were written as a native app for a particular smartphone.

Of course, WebGL has to make progress on the hardware side as well. It’s present in the browsers on most of the recent phones, but it is often not turned on by default. That is because it is unstable sometimes. Ludei is adding WebGL into its own virtual machine, and that gets bundled today with every iOS and Android native wrapper, Monastiero said. That means it will make the technology work, regardless of what is turned on by default or not in hardware devices. Ludei currently has about 3,500 developers working on 2,000 known projects.

Ludei chief technology officer Ibon Tolosana plans to talk about the technology in a sponsored talk at the Game Developers Conference on Thursday.

Ludei 3D from Ludei on Vimeo.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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We are working with UK Trade & Investment to showcase the United Kingdom's thriving start-up and investment scene through a series of posts and video interviews at SXSW. Check out all of the coverage here. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity.

AUSTIN, Texas — There’s a direct line of descent from the NeXT machine, which is what Tim Berners-Lee used to create the World Wide Web, to the iPhone.

“It’s basically the same machine,” Berners-Lee said, referring to the underlying BSD Unix core.

That was the beginning of a rapid-fire, enthusiastic, often technical talk about the history of the Web and the virtues of the open Web as a platform, here at South by Southwest Interactive, an annual conference/festival of geekdom.

His talk, “Open Web Platform — Hopes and Fears,” played to a large crowd, although the conference hall it was held in was only half full. (It wasn’t clear if the bleacher seating at the back was closed off or not, but only a handful of people sat there.)

Berners-Lee took the stage after an introduction by John Perry Barlow, who told about his first encounter with the Web in its earliest days, when it was still just emerging from CERN. Then, TBL — as he’s often called — talked extempore for the next 50 minutes without stopping.

The Web was open by design from the very beginning, Berners-Lee said.

“HTML, HTTP, and URLs: The idea was, they had to be universal,” he said. There were no restrictions on the programming languages people could use to generate Web pages, as long as they were compatible with the basic standards. And those standards were made to be familiar to people using already-existing standards. For instance, he put tags inside angle brackets so it would look familiar to SGML people. HTTP headers are similar to other communications protocols. URLs were made to be compatible with domain name system.

Berners-Lee made the system declarative (like CSS), not procedural (like JavaScript), following what he called his “principle of least power.”

“Procedural systems are powerful, because you can do whatever you like,” he said. But they’re less interoperable and shorter-lived; declarative systems tend to last longer because they’re more universally compatible.Incidentally, declarative systems are also more secure.

“If it’s a Turing complete system, you can’t limit it,” he said — and that can lead to security problems.

Berners-Lee spent the bulk of his time talking about the value of HTML5 and the Open Web Platform, and encouraging people to develop mobile web apps rather than native apps.

“It’s a powerful platform, because JavaScript is Turing complete,” Berners-Lee said.

“It’s got all the power of HTML5, like easily-inserted video, and in the future, easily-inserted conferences. … And it’s got the APIs,” for accessing hardware and other capabilities on the device, such as a smartphone’s accelerometer, camera, local storage.

“HTML5 is everywhere,” Berners-Lee said. It’s even being used in signs, like you might see on an electronic highway billboard or kiosks in airports.

“I wonder whether people will still continue to print stuff like this,” he said, indicating the backdrop behind the stage, “or whether the conference hall will just be pixels.”

One of the reasons the Web was successful, he said, is because it followed the basic openness of the Internet protocols that preceded it.

“When they developed TCP and IP, they did a wonderful thing, which is they completely ignored how it would be used,” he said. “They didn’t design it specifically for sending email messages, or for file retrieval.”

TBL takes his own shots at the crowd.

While he was being fitted with a microphone onstage before his talk began, fans started walking up to take pictures of one of the heroes of the Internet. Shortly, Berners-Lee turned his own camera on the crowd. From the stage, he aimed a small point-and-shoot camera back at the photographers in front of him, snapping pic after pic as they snapped him.

Before long, the crowd of photographers had at least doubled in size. People (including myself) were apparently unable to resist the meta-ness of the moment, photographing the Web’s inventor photographing them.

Then Berners-Lee started throwing stickers into the crowd. “Proprietary logos!” he called out. “Free proprietary logos! Use them however you’d like.”

He was clearly enjoying his fame — and enjoying turning it on its head.

Some other nuggets from TBL’s speech:

• “Build platforms,” Berners-Lee exhorted the crowd. “When you build something big and complicated and powerful, it’s not a question of what you can do — it’s a question of what people can do with what you built.”
• “We really expected 3D to take off more quickly. It’s one of those things that is always just around the corner.”
• “We have the potential for every HTML document to be a computer — and for it to be programmable. Because the thing about a Turing complete computer is that … anything you can imagine doing, you should be able to program.
• “Tell all the kids you know … don’t teach them Microsoft Word. Tell them that you can do anything with a computer that you can imagine. And the reason it sucks right now is you haven’t fixed it.”
• Berners-Lee also emphasized the importance — and difficulty — of contributing to working groups on Web standards. He said if you can’t join a working group, you should find someone who is on a group like this, and buy them a beer, because the work is really difficult.

Looking back on the Web, Berners-Lee offered some perspective on what the Web means most to him.

“The kittens are great, don’t get me wrong,” he said — but he went on to say how much more he valued the Web’s capability to solve international, global problems.

“Remember, when you do that … keep an eye out, and spend a certain amount of time fighting for net neutrality, and fighting spying and blocking.”

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“Everyone knows that if you make HTML5 perform, you change the game,” said Steve Newcomb, the founder of semi-stealth startup Famo.us, in his company’s SoMa loft last week.

His statement is a fact so well established that I have to wonder aloud why he and his small band of geniuses are tackling this particular problem: better, faster, and smoother technology for Internet apps.

After all, when he said “everyone,” that “everyone” includes giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Mozilla — everyone does know that better HTML5 and JavaScript means better web and mobile web apps and an entirely new ecosystem for discovering and distributing content to people all around the world. And everyone has skin in that particular game.

“It’s the great leveler,” Newcomb continues, “but everything else is proprietary to specific devices. … The world is littered with examples where the small company is able to accomplish the thing that the behemoth is not. They all have innovator’s dilemma. And they all have a lot invested in native.”

So, Newcomb and Famo.us are attempting to rapidly change the game with a few different technology tools that could redefine how we see the mobile web in particular. Currently, it’s the second-class citizen of the tech world.

“Most of the other HTML5 companies want to match native performance,” Newcomb said. “We’re trying to make it look like the AOL of yesteryear. The web world has things in it that can go way beyond native.”

The problem with the web

The web has one problem — mobile, desktop, “modern,” whatever — as Newcomb sees it: “It was meant to render a document.

“After 18 months of failing, we realized that rendering engine inside those browsers wasn’t meant to render an app. We had been using the wrong tool for the wrong job.”

Two and a half years ago, Famo.us started out as a Pinterest clone using web technologies. Newcomb’s tech team had been looking for ways to build a better web app. They tried jQuery, Appcelerator, Sencha. “And none of them would work,” he said.

“We had around $700,000 left in the bank when Facebook went back to native [for its iOS app], and we didn’t blame them. … We were like, ‘Oh, my god, we’re screwed. We chose HTML5 to build our product, and it’s the wrong thing.’ We had two choices: Go native, or build our own thing so we can have an app that works.”

How Famo.us works

In a true application, not just a website, Newcomb explains, you typically have a single-page design with one URL and a lot of motion and interaction.

“Things are a lot more lively,” said Newcomb. “And when you’re dealing with animation, you’ve left the realm of what web developers know how to do and what a gaming engineer does.”

The solution: Build a gaming engine for rendering on the web. “We looked at Unity 3D and Unreal 4 — those guys figured out how to render things quickly and make it look beautiful and insanely performant and exquisitely detailed,” he said. “And we were like, ‘Maybe the web got it wrong all along.’”

In Famo.us, you no longer talk about divs and documents. Everything is in terms of surfaces. Famo.us is capable of rendering hundreds of surfaces at 60 frames per second. Newcomb said that every consumer-facing app he and his team has looked at has fewer than 50 surfaces displaying at a time.

Still, they decided to put their theories and their game engine to the test in a demo featuring the periodic table of elements:

“This is a fundamental stress test of everything that is ruining JavaScript engineers’ lives right now,” Newcomb said. “It’s the kitchen sink of HTML5 problems: infinite scroll view with momentum … being in motion in an app, and then changing your mind. … It’s a disaster in HTML5.”

Newcomb explains the details of how and why Famo.us handles motion — something we hope to delve into with him later. “We started as a rendering engine. we now have a physics engine, and we’ve got one more engine we’re not allowed to talk about yet,” he said.

“When you code up this motion, it’s actually complex. There’s a ton of these using the CSS3 primitive transform method. We don’t. We actually use a physics engine the way a game engine uses a physics engine. This decreases development time by an order of magnitude.

Why one major company is playing ball

Today, Famo.us has announced a new round of funding, $4 million to add to its previous million-dollar seed round. The interesting part of it is, a quarter of today’s funding has come from one major manufacturing company.

Newcomb said, “All the companies that manufacture phones … software is something where they don’t typically have strengths there. That’s where we come in.”

While the proprietary big-name players duke it out to gain mobile-web ground for their own purposes and a range of smaller companies make big claims about their HTML5 tools, Newcomb told us, “When you look for validation points, what you look for is a major player validating you in some way. You look for what kind of team is at the startup. You look for how many developers are signing up. And then, seeing is believing, and that’s one of the reasons we made the periodic table demo our homepage.”

This major electronics manufacturer came into Famo.us’s current round with a million-dollar investment, he continued, and seeing was believing for it as well.

“They are the number one vendor for phones, tablets, PCs, and television sets, and we work across all their devices,” he said. “And you don’t get an ivestment like that unless you’ve been validated all the way up the chain.”

Fighting for devs

Of course, once you start taking bigger money, you have to start thinking about how to pay it back.

“That question I’ve struggled with ever since we decided to become a platform company,” Newcomb said. “From the beginning, we were the HTML devs we were trying to serve.”

As a result, he said, the company is trying to keep its as-yet unlaunched tools free for developers to use while “building revenue relationships with hardware manufacturers, so that the long tail customers of Famo.us simply use it as part of their development environment.

“Anytime we think about charging developers for our product, we all, like, barf.”

In addition to taking money from OEMs and other hardware partners, he hopes to be able to charge some of the bigger consumer-facing web companies with a vested interest in mobile web technologies — Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. “I can’t tell you how proud I would be if I got to help some of the JavaScript engineers I’ve gotten to know at those companies,” Newcomb said.

“We’re fighting for the JavaScript developers who are trying to build these damn apps, and the existing frameworks just don’t work with the browser.”

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What about native-only solutions?

Only 15 percent of developers would go native-only when building an app for multiple platforms, a stat that might be a little shocking to those witnessed Facebook famously and loudly abandoning HTML5 development last year in favor of a faster, smoother, better native app experience.

See the infographic: What developers do with HTML5

“Most developers were not impacted by that Facebook decision,” Kendo UI EVP Todd Anglin told me yesterday. “One thing that gets overlooked often in the Facebook news is that Facebook hasn’t abandoned HTML5 at all … just changed their use of it.”

In fact, the new Facebook app includes a lot of HTML5, Anglin said, adding that Facebook has said that HTML5 makes it faster to develop and maintain multiple apps.

Source: KendoUI

Developers who are actively using HTML5

HTML5 on the desktop

HTML5 on mobile is nothing new. But what about HTML5 on the desktop?

It turns out that HTML5 could be huge on the desktop, with 66 percent of developers interested in developing HTML5 apps for Windows 8, almost half interesting in building apps for Google’s Chrome OS, and another third thinking about developing apps for the emerging Firefox OS.

“It’s the final frontier for where HTML5 should go,” Anglin said. “And it begs the question … why don’t we think of this as an equal option for a PC?”

On a desktop PC, HTML5 would not be limited by a relatively puny mobile processor, either, meaning that developers could do even more with HTML5 video and interactivity. What that means, Anglin said, is that you could have a complete unified strategy for all mobile operating systems and desktop systems at one time … that uses the same codebase and the same developer skill set.

That’s fairly mind-blowing, considering where we’ve come from.

Source: KendoUI

HTML5 for the desktop

The ‘one + HTML5′ strategy

A growing strategic solution to the challenge of multiple platforms seems to be the “one + HTML5″ plan, in which developers build one app for a key target platform in native code — although it may also contain some HTML5 — and one app for all the other desired-but-not-core platforms in HTML5.

Typically, the “one” is iOS, although it could also be Android, and the HTML5 solution is for BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and any other desired platforms.

Still, given a choice, most developers would either do a pure HTML5 app for all platforms, or a hybrid app: HTML5 core, with native wrapping on each targeted platform.

Source: Kendo UI

Native vs HTML5 vs Hybrid apps

The hype cycle — HTML5 isn’t overhyped anymore

Only a quarter of developers now believe that HTML5 is overhyped, while almost half strongly believe it is not.

“Developers are now beyond the hype curve,” Anglin said. “Even though some developers think that  HTML5 is overhyped, that doesn’t mean they don’t think it’s a platform that is both usable and important.”

78 percent of developers now say HTML5 is appropriate for building mobile apps, and 68 percent say it’s appropriate for all developers building any kind of app.

iOS and BlackBerry: both hard to develop for

While iOS is a top platform, developers say it’s difficult to develop for. In fact, iOS ranked just under the notoriously challenging BlackBerry for development difficulty. Sixty-four percent of developers said that BlackBerry was challenging — and having developed two apps for the platform myself, I agree — while 69 percent said that iOS was difficult.

Objective-C is not the newest or widest-known language in the world, of course, and Apple does put a few hurdles in developers’ paths as well.

In contrast, half of developers thought that Windows 8 was easy to develop for, and Windows Phone 8 was not far behind. Android, meanwhile, was split: 26 percent said it was very easy, while 29 percent said it was very hard.

“What’s surprising to us is not that it’s difficult, but that’s it almost twice as difficult to work with as Android,” Anglin said. “We would have thought developers would rank Android equal to iOS or even harder, since there are so many more devices in the Android ecosystem.”

Source: Kendo UI

Mobile platforms: how difficult?

photo credit: brucelawson via photopin cc

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But some still feel the technology is over-hyped.

So Kendo UI — which makes an HTML5-based mobile development toolkit — surveyed 5,000 developers to see what they’re doing with the technology.

Get the full story: 5,000 developers on HTML5

It turns out that 70 percent of North American developers are already using HTML5, as are roughly 60 percent of South American, European, and Chinese developers. And they’re using them to build productivity tools, utilities, and more.

Here’s the data in visual form:

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last week we suggested a few things to keep an eye out for at Mobile World Congress, and last night we had our first sighting.

Mozilla announced a greatly expanded line-up for its Firefox OS. Firefox OS, or FOS, is interesting because it is entirely ‘web-based,’ meaning the average HTML-literate web developer can write an app for the system. Many developers (and carriers) see this as somewhat of a holy grail, the ultimate end game of all the mobile operating system platform wars.

Creating great mobile experiences in a world of OS fragmentation is one of the major themes of VentureBeat’s invitation-only Mobile Summit, which is only six weeks away (April 1-2 in Sausalito, Calif.). Read more about the Mobile Summit themes.

Firefox will not bring an end to the platform wars, but it is a step in that direction. In our post last week, we told you to keep an eye out for new hardware partners and new carriers. And at its press event yesterday, Mozilla delivered both. They now have three hardware partners including TCL (aka Alcatel), LG Electronics, and ZTE. That’s a good start, with devices shipping ‘this summer.’

Mozilla also announced 17 carrier partners, and this is probably far more important. Telefonica was already on board, having been the first to announce Firefox OS support last year. Added to this were America Movil, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Hutchison, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Smart, SIngTel, Sprint, Vimplecom, and a few more.

You may not recognize some of the names on this list, and that’s because Firefox OS is targeting carriers in emerging markets. But Mozilla ha now lined up something like 17 of the top 30 carriers globally. This is a pretty serious list.

So far so good. There is still a lot we don’t know about Firefox OS, and it is still largely untested in the marketplace. But last night annoucement shows the company has made considerable progress.

Updated at 4:30 p.m. Pacific with appMobi’s response.

Intel has acquired appMobi, a company whose tools help mobile app developers work with HTML5.

Billed as an “HTML5 development ecosystem,” this small startup based in Lancaster, Penn., offers a number of solutions for companies looking to build mobile applications that run in the browser, including features like user authentication, “touch to buy,” push notifications, user analytics, and on-device app updates.

ReadWriteWeb, which named appMobi “the most promising company of 2012,“ reported that Intel “has gutted” the firm to acquire its tools and staff in an effort to build its own suite of developer tools for mobile apps, turning appMobi into a “pure-play cloud services provider, offering developers backend service support for HTML5 mobile applications.”

In a response, appMobi, released more information about the deal and said that “appMobi is very much alive and kicking coming out of this transaction.” Intel has acquired the HTML5 developer tools and build system and hired the tools-related technical staff, but appMobi will continue as a “strong, high growth company, operating its existing mobile app cloud services business.”

Intel will now own and manage the HTML5 development tools, and appMobi will focus on “delivering cross platform solutions for mobile app engagement and monetization on all platforms.”

Photo Credit: USACEpublicaffairs/Flickr

After two years of development, Game Closure is launching a software development kit to enable game creators to marry HTML5 with Javascript to create fast-moving web games that incorporate graphics acceleration.

In the past, gamemakers have tried to embrace HTML5, the new lingua franca of the web, to create games that can run on any platform. That potentially saves a lot of money, but HTML5 runs too slow without graphics acceleration via a graphics processing unit, or GPU.

Michael Carter, the chief executive of Game Closure, said the advantage is that its kit enables quick and easy development with GPU-backed native performance. In short, it leads to fast games that are easy to make.

“Developers write Javascript, we compile to native, and it’s not a wrapped web view,” Carter said in an email. “Our engine has backed dozens of games, millions of users, and we’ve hit the top-10 charts in 20-plus countries around the world.”

Today, Carter’s company is releasing the Game Closure DevKit for everyone to build mobile games. The kit is free and open source. Carter said developers will use the kit to create mobile games much more quickly, cheaply, and of higher quality. He said the games will automatically be suitable for worldwide publication, run on every platform that matters, and will be optimized for quick reaction to monetization and user metrics after launch.

“This is a technology that empowers small teams to build top 10, worldwide games for Android and iOS simultaneously,” Carter said. “We are making this technology available to the world for free as open source so that everyone can contribute features and bug fixes while selling commercial games on the app stores without any licensing or royalty fees to Game Closure.”

Carter said that his company wants developers to build fun games without worrying about a buggy, crash-prone tech stack — translating to dozens of languages, or porting and rewriting for multiple phones, operating systems, and stores.

“There’s simply no reason that mobile-game development should be this hard,” he said. “The worst part now is that the vast majority of studios fail before they even get to the hard part: moving quickly to react to user data and increase monetization through quick game updates around content and in-app purchases. The companies that are lucky enough to make it that far often miss their opportunity because they can’t move quickly enough to fully monetize a growing user base.”

Carter said his kit solves all of those problems, and his comapny is making it free to expand its community as fast as possible.

He said that Game Closure developers regularly release high-quality, polished games to the store after two or three weeks of development.

“HTML5 and Javascript have the most mature development environments, period,” he said. “Every year Google, Apple, Firefox, Microsoft, and others pour millions of dollars into developing a toolset. From editors, faster scripting engines, memory profilers, debuggers, and language features, you can depend on an incredibly healthy ecosystem of HTML5 developer tools. There is no disputing that the web application development stack is one of the most robust, mature, and familiar in the software industry.”

Game Closure will develop paid products in the future. The company was founded in 2011 and raised $12 million from Highland, Greylock, Benchmark, Yuri Milner, Matt Ocko, Joi Ito, SV Angel, and Felix Shpilman.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you’re looking for controversy, try typing “HTML5 is” into your browser and spend an hour reading through the various pros and cons of the web’s latest update. Some claim that HTML5 levels the playing fields, while others call it a premature technology with no near-term place in technology’s value chain.

Between my roles at AppMobi and now Ludei, I’ve heard every argument — and most of the criticisms are true.

The question is: Is HTML5 the right tool for the job? If you try to pound a nail into a wall with a banana, you’re gonna have problems. Bring a knife to gun fight? You get the idea.

The truth is that I believe HTML5 is ready for game development, and I promise to show you how.

It’s good, it’s bad, and often very ugly

HTML5 is awesome — no one should deny this. Many of its new capabilities are game-changing, but when it comes to using HTML5 for mobile gaming, some elements are clearly missing or busted. Audio is basically broken. Complex animations render slowly in mobile browsers. Many of the features of that would make HTML5 well suited for gaming have been left out, like support for vibration or gyroscope. And let’s face it, we all compared games on the mobile web to titles available on the Apple App Store and Google’s Play market. And the comparison is rarely pretty.

But the potential is real

So what’s the value proposition of HTML5 for mobile-game development? Cross-platform deployment, of course.

If you build your game correctly, you can deploy it across a variety of devices with a single code base. No other option for building games is as versatile. Not iOS nor Android. Not WP8 nor Unity.

HTML5 is a standard component of all popular mobile browsers, and it already has most of the necessary ingredients for great mobile games.

So what are the real issues?

Performance: Apple has made some big strides in terms of browser performance, but Android lags behind. High-quality animated games have problems on mobile platforms, and developers cannot target only the newest, fastest devices.

Distribution: This is the deal-breaker. The web has no compelling outlets for distributing HTML5. In fact, we’ve got just two compelling delivery options for any mobile game – the App Store and Google Play.

Cool native device features: HTML5 struggles to access a device’s gyroscope, haptic feedback, accelerometers, and camera in today’s browsers. Also, multichannel audio APIs, key for developers of top titles, are also missing or broken.

Monetization: Apple has a solid in-app payment solution, as does Google Play and even Amazon. The same cannot be said for the mobile web. Here we have a chicken-and-egg scenario. Monetization companies not called Apple or Google spend their energy developing solutions for helping game developers make money where the users are, namely in native iOS and Android games. These firms spend little energy creating compelling billing and currency solutions for the mobile web.

Messaging: One of the great innovations spurred by OS-native games is direct messaging via push notifications. Such a system does not exist for the mobile web.

Get to the point, Joe!

I promised I’d get there, so here it is: New technology providers have solved virtually all of the aforementioned criticisms lobbed against HTML5. Many people remain skeptical because of a lack of awareness, but the right tools are available. To be fair, it’s hard to keep up with. Tool maturity and availability is progressing at lightning speed.

Here’s how platform providers are solving the problems:

Performance problem: solved! Use hardware to directly accelerate the graphics commands, rather than use software APIs to draw images and animations on the screen like most mobile browsers.

Distribution problem: solved! Cloud Compiler enables developers to easily “wrap” their projects into a native hybrid container that is fully compatible with the Apple and Android Markets. While you’re at it, you might as well let Cloud Compiler build a WP8, BBY, Amazon, Mozilla, and Tizen app. One code base fits all.

Cool native device features problem: solved! Using the same concept used above for performance, tie the native device functions not available to HTML5 developers to JavaScript. Web developers then get easy “OneAPI” access to the camera, accelerometer, gyroscope, and so on.

Monetization problem: solved! In a similar fashion, create JavaScript extension APIs that bind native payments and native ad networks. Again, one API for in-app payment is abstracted to multiple payment systems behind the scenes by the platform.

Messaging problem: solved! Messaging requires OS-specific servers. Create a non-OS specific messaging API that transparently delivers messages to the OS-specific servers for the developer.

Another upcoming solution (in Q1 2013) is to build a plug-in for mobile browser and handset makers that provides all of the functionality described above, creating “gaming” browsers and handsets that perform same-as-native.

So, why isn’t everyone embrace HTML5 for mobile gaming?

Be patient – they probably will.

Small, fast-moving companies are doing much of the problem-solving, and it takes time to deliver the message to the industry. The single biggest problem is awareness. And in the gaming industry, awareness comes with hit titles. And those are coming.

The first quarter of 2013 will probably be the quarter that turns the momentum for HTML5 mobile gaming; 2013 will definitely be the year that HTML5 game development takes center stage. Seriously – if you can develop a game with a single team and a single code base, check seven or eight boxes and get native binaries back for delivery to the most popular app stores, who wouldn’t consider it?

Joe Monastiero is the president of Ludei, Inc., the world’s leading HTML5 game development and publishing platform.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Before I make predictions on the new year, I’ll take a look at how I did on my predictions last year, with letter grades on them. In a separate post, I’ll let fly the predictions for 2013. If you have ideas of your own, please leave them in the comments and take our poll at the end. After you get a look at this story, be sure to check out our 2013 predictions. Of the 12 predictions I made last year, I’m giving myself a letter grade of A on four of them, a B on 5, a C on one, a D on one, and an F on one. Here’s this year’s predictions.

Last year’s predictions

1. Social and mobile gaming will get stronger. I predicted, “Now that Zynga and Nexon have both raised a billion dollars, they’ll be able to use that money to accelerate acquisitions and expand their positions in the fastest-growing parts of the video game business. The good thing is that social and mobile games are already popular, but they’re in their infancy. They have plenty of room to evolve and grow.”

Letter grade: B

Mobile games took off as the number of smartphone and tablet users soared. But social games stalled as Facebook’s growth slowed and Zynga failed to execute on its strategy, disappointing Wall Street.

2. Console games become the Red Queen. ”Like the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass, console and PC games will continue to run just to stay where they are. With sales flat compared to 2009 and 2008, the console game sector appears to be stuck.”

I got this one wrong because the retail game industry led by the consoles saw double-digit declines in the U.S. for just about every month in 2012. December sales haven’t come in yet, but I don’t expect it to have a lot of great news for publishers. Blame the slowdown on the aging consoles and the growth of digital games.

Letter grade: B

3. World of Warcraft will continue its steady decline. “The question is whether Blizzard will be able to execute an orderly retreat. At some point, the company will launch Titan, its next massively multiplayer online game. But it sure doesn’t look like that game will arrive in 2012.”

World of Warcraft has been losing players, falling from a peak of 12 million at the beginning of 2011 to 10 million in the most recent quarter ended Sept. 30. The losses haven’t been drastic, with the 10 million figure down only 200,000 from the beginning of the year. WoW lost a million players in the second quarter, but in the third quarter, WoW regained nearly a million subscribers thanks to the launch of its Mists of Pandaria expansion. Will the number go back down again in the fourth quarter? If it does, I’ll get an A on this prediction.

Letter grade: B

4. Cloud gaming gains ground. “In 2010, OnLive launched its cloud-based game streaming service. But its impact hasn’t really been measurable yet. OnLive hasn’t released user numbers, retailers such as GameStop haven’t gone out of business, and publishers are still counting on retail sales for a big part of their revenues. In 2011, cloud gaming continued to expand, growing to the United Kingdom and spreading to mobile devices. As more websites embed cloud-gaming demos for free, users will start to see the benefits of the games-on-demand services. We can expect to see more game streaming in 2012, since Gaikai has teamed up with Wal-Mart and GameStop is prepping its own service. OnLive has a couple of hundred games available, making it a force to be reckoned with among those distributing games in digital form. If more titles and more exclusives land in the lap of OnLive, the gamers will follow. But the question is, will the growth be gradual, or will it pick up momentum in 2012?”

Cloud gaming isn’t dead, but it suffered its worst setback as OnLive (led by Steve Perlman, pictured right) hit the wall and filed for a bankruptcy alternative. The company failed to raise funding and changed ownership.

Letter grade: F

5. Tablets and smartphones will continue to steal gamers from dedicated handheld gaming devices.  “The competition between Android and Apple will accelerate the rate of innovation in mobile, and that will grind up the dedicated gaming devices. Kids in particular will drive this transition as they move from the iPod Touch to iPhones to iPads, possibly skipping handhelds altogether. The PS Vita has plenty of cool new games, but it’s hard to beat the free-to-play or 99-cent prices on iOS and Android.”

Even as console game sales fell at double-digit rates during 2012, the growth of smartphones and tablets paved the way for big gains in mobile game downloads.

Letter grade: A

6. The platforms will multiply. In every part of the business where there isn’t enough competition, new platforms will emerge to provide it. Google+, for instance, will rise as a gaming platform to compete with Facebook, which has pretty much wiped out a lot of its competition. In mobile, Microsoft’s Windows Phone will mount a bigger challenge to Android and iOS. And within existing platforms, such as Android, we’ll see new kinds of gaming devices emerge. And where these new platforms arise, they will prominently feature games because games will help differentiate these platforms and show off what they can do.

This year saw the launch of the Wii U, the expansion of the Amazon Kindle Fire, new smartphones, the iPad Mini, and the announcement of the Ouya Android-based game console.

Letter grade: A

7. Nintendo launches a console in the fall of 2012, but Sony and Microsoft wait until 2013. “Nintendo’s new Wii U console is expected to debut in 2012 with its tablet-like controller. But I don’t expect it to set the world on fire the way the Wii did starting in 2006. That will give Microsoft and Sony some breathing room to create high-end machines that can run circles around the Wii U. By waiting a year, the heavy-duty console makers can stretch out the console cycle by one more year and then make more money on the current generation. They will also be able to launch advanced consoles with one more year of the cost learning curve under their belts. Having said that, I would bet that it is more than likely that Sony and Microsoft will try to dampen the enthusiasm for the Wii U by announcing new systems in 2012 that won’t ship until 2013. That’s the familiar vaporware tactic that helped the PlayStation 2 defeat Sega’s Dreamcast in the good old days.”

This was right on the mark on the timing of the consoles as the console makers didn’t pull any big surprises. But Microsoft and Sony didn’t announce anything.

Letter grade: B

8. Location-aware mobile gaming will gather momentum. “Will Wright, the gaming legend who created SimCity, is exploring location-based entertainment because it can lead to what he calls “personal gaming,” where a game can be more easily customized to a person’s tastes because it makes use of data that it knows about that person. By tapping into location information, game creators can make their titles more and more relevant to consumers. To date, location-based games have had density problems, where not enough players are playing in one location. But it’s possible to design games that get around this issue, and developers will be able to keep you entertained based on where you are.”

Unfortunately, Wright got into a lawsuit with a co-founder and spent much of the year dealing with the litigation. The lawsuit was finally settled, but personal gaming will have to wait. Meanwhile, Red Robot Labs scored big with its Life Is Crime location game in 2012.

Letter grade: C

9. Family mobile data plans increase game consumption. “I borrowed this prediction from Exent, which forecasted that numerous mobile carriers will lower their data fees per device and allow families to share plans. This means that you won’t have to pay a lot extra to enable your kid to play online games. That will enable more users to engage in connected social games on mobile devices that operate at satisfyingly high speeds. That could trigger sales of more data-enabled devices, which are ideal gaming machines.”

Verizon Wireless followed through on its plan, but there is no indication whether this affected game downloads.

Letter grade: D

10. HTML5 won’t be ready for prime time yet. “This new format for web content wants to be the lingua franca of the web. But it isn’t so fast when it comes to running games. By contrast, native apps run much better on mobile devices. HTML5 games can’t make use of specific hardware in games such as a camera, and they don’t work well if the browser’s connection is weak. As devices get better and web speeds improve on mobile, HTML5′s performance will get better. But it has a long way to go, and native or hybrid solutions are likely to rule the day next year.”

Some companies tried to launch HTML5 games, but there was a lot of pushback. Wooga created a HTML5 mobile game but decided not to launch it commercially. But advocates of HTML5 hybrid apps such as Ludei and Game Closure launched ways to speed gaming up.

Letter grade: A

11. Monetization matters.“New revenues from ads and improved conversion rates will provide a bigger growth rate for the industry. Too many companies rely on one business model when they could embrace multiple ones. If you look at Zynga, the company gets only 5 percent of its revenue from advertising and 95 percent from virtual goods. With more than 200 million monthly active users, Zynga has amassed a huge audience for brand advertisers, yet it has shied away from ads for fear they could be intrusive in the game experience. But in-game ads can be crafted so that users like them. Just ask innovators such as Kiip, which offers promotional rewards in a mobile game at the moment when you achieve something. If Zynga made just $1 a month in ads from each user, it could generate an extra $2.4 billion in annual revenues. That’s an untapped opportunity. By the same token, Zynga generates revenue from only 2.5 percent of its users. If it could double that number to 5 percent, it could double its revenue. In 2012, I expect to see publishers take advantage of multiple monetization strategies.”

The use of alternative monetization strategies expanded on mobile platforms, but Zynga was still very dependent on virtual goods revenue during 2012.

Letter grade: B

12. Somebody will get hacked. “With embarrassing security breaches all over the place, game companies can expect more hacker attacks in 2012. The PlayStation Network suffered the ultimate embarrassment as it went down for six weeks after being hacked. Valve, Square Enix, and many others suffered the same indignity. It’s good to be prepared. Online game sites and companies that use virtual currency have a lot at stake.”

A variety of firms were hacked, including Zynga, NCsoft, Gamigo, and others.

Letter grade: A

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Brainshark has been a leading online presentation service for some time now, and it’s also launched a successful iOS app, Slideshark, for viewing Powerpoint presentations on Apple devices. But until now, the only way to take advantage of interactive features in Brainshark’s presentations on mobile required downloading an app.

That all changes today with the launch of Brainshark’s Mobile Player, an HTML5-powered viewer that lets anyone with an iOS or Android device view your presentations from within a web browser.

“Mobile is key for us, obviously, as our customers are moving there,” said Greg Flynn, senior vice president of products and services at Brainshark, in an interview with VentureBeat. “The combination of Brainshark, Slideshark, and the ability to use any of those presentation assets … from a mobile device is key to our strategy.”

The mobile player gives you most of the functionality of Brainshark’s apps: you can play presentations, view attachments, and respond to poll, survey, and exam questions (which makes it particularly useful for mobile learning, or “mLearning,” programs). You can also share presentations to friends via social media and e-mail.

Brainshark spent around six to nine months developing the mobile player, but the real difficulty was dealing with all of the various asset types that its presentations support, Flynn noted. Ultimately, the company took advantage of a core feature from its recently released Slideshark iOS app to power the mobile player.

“If you think about it, people in sales are always looking for just in time information,” Flynn added. “Now with the ability to perform so much with their mobile devices, Brainshark is really extending out capabilities as people need it.”

Waltham, MA-based Brainshark was founded in 1999 and last took funding in 2005.

This guest post is written by Mozilla’s Ron Piovesan.

A recent VentureBeat post entitled “Why HTML5 provided more tricks than treats in 2012” outlined a series of reason why, in the author’s view, HTML5 failed to deliver in 2012.

The article was oft tweeted, but it, like the headline, was … well… so October. It focused too much on the HTML5 of the past.

We spend an inordinate amount of time at Mozilla thinking, talking, and doing HTML5; and given that we are coming up on the Holiday Season, let’s look at each of the “tricks” that story cited and see what surprise we can pull out of Santa’s sack to counter it.

Trick 1: Cross-Platform HTML5 Development Hasn’t Taken Off.

Surprise: There are two answers here. The first is that with Responsive Design, you can actually create a single app that runs equally well on mobile and desktop. The best example I know of is The Boston Globe. You can watch a video here of how they do what they do responsively. Behance has a great collection of Responsive Design examples.

The other answer is, yeah, for a lot of apps you probably will have to do a mobile and desktop version. But you have to do that anyway when you’re making an app. The benefit of HTML5 is less “write once, run everywhere” as it is “write once and optimize.” You could write a single HTML5 app that works across a variety of handsets. And then use a lot of the same code for another app that works across desktop and tablets.

Sure, you’re not writing one app and out-of-the-box deploying it everywhere. But you could write an app, tweak it a little, and cover every platform you need.

Trick 2: App Stores Deliver Discoverability, HTML5-Only Sites Are Out in the Woods.

Surprise: What if there was a new marketplace that only distributed HTML5 apps? Would that help? What if that marketplace was distributed on a new HTML5 mobile operating system? What if that marketplace was also distributed on Android?

We would also challenge the notion that the only way to provide discoverability is via an app store. The web provided great discoverability for years, right Google? If you can discover a web site, you can discover a web app.

There is also innovation happening in discoverability. Quixey is doing a great job of creating app discovery tools. And you may have read that Mozilla invested in everything.me, probably one of the most innovative and user-friendly approaches to HTML5 app discovery out there.

Major publications from the Financial Times to the New York Times are finding it easier and more effective to distribute their apps on their own. Think about it: Users have been accustomed to openly and freely finding content on the web for decades; the real historical anomaly is the centralized app store.

Trick 3: Hybrid Apps Can’t Depend on Mobile Browsers

Surprise: Soon, they won’t need to. Who says you need a mobile browser to access HTML5 content? In reality, all you need is a runtime capable of running HTML5 and you’re set. Again, Mozilla is leading the way by building a browserless runtime that not only runs HTML5 content but also provides the APIs that let the app talk to device level components such as the camera, accelerometer, and so on.

Put another way, HTML5 content will soon run outside of the browser. All the capabilities the HTML5 app needs will be attached to the app itself, so neither the developer nor the user will have to worry about what mobile browser is on the device.

Trick 4: Fragmentation, Fragmentation, Fragmentation

Surprise: I’d have to refer back to points 1 and 3. Responsive Design (point 1) can help address the fragmentation issue across different phone sizes; and having your app run on a single web runtime (point 3) will eliminate fragmentation challenges due to different browsers.

There are always going to be fragmentation issues, but the web is by far a more flexible creation and distribution platform.

Trick 5: HTML5 Isn’t Robust Enough

Surprise: At Mozilla, we love the web but we’ll fully concede that HTML5 and the mobile web haven’t kept up with other mobile technologies. But that’s the past. Here’s the future: New design techniques like responsive design are helping to make cross-platform optimization easier. New companies like everything.me are offering innovative discovery and making the app store obsolete. And we’re doing our part at Mozilla by creating, and then open-sourcing, new web technologies like a web runtime and new APIs to give HTML5 apps the same look and feel and performance as any other mobile app.

So, has the past of HTML5 been more trick than treat? Maybe. But reaching into our holiday bag of surprises, we’re finding a new HTML5 present that will be the future of mobile apps.

Ron Piovesan leads business development for Mozilla’s App Marketplace and is responsible for signing distribution deals with major content and games providers.

A version of this post appeared on the Mozilla apps blog.

[Top image credit: HomeArt/Shutterstock]

The HTML5 based platform responds to users’ activity by changing the apps on screen to accommodate their needs. According to a statement issued this morning, the technology bridges the gap between the web and mobile:

“Rather than the static experience of today’s smartphone, a dynamic phone adapts its offering of apps on the fly, matching the content and services a user needs with the most relevant apps available – whether locally or from the cloud.”

This is the third round of funding for this product, which was first released as DoAT at TechCrunch Disupt in May 2011. The $25 million brings total investment to $35.5 million. This round was led by Telefonica Digital, and as well as SingTel Innov8, Mozilla and previous investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), DFJTF, BRM Group and Horizons Ventures. Everything.me is based in Israel. Read the press release.

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Ben Savage is the founder of Spaceport.io, a platform for mobile game developers.

The stage was set with an expected one billion HTML5 phones sold by 2013. Facebook was ready to pave the way. I could repeat many other reasons why HTML5 should have taken off in 2012, but as we’ve seen over the last year, it just didn’t. Mark Zuckerberg said it best, “The biggest mistake we did as a company was bet too much on HTML5.”

Here’s an explanation for why HTML5 did not meet the high expectations set last year.

1. Cross-Platform HTML5 Development Hasn’t Taken Off

There is a massive split between desktop and mobile HTML5. Just because the technology exists across desktop and mobile, doesn’t mean the design issues have changed:

1) Keyboard compared to keypad
2) Screen size of the platform
3) Mouse compared to touchscreen.

It’s optimal to develop products for a specific platform. This allows developers to personalize the look, feel, and functionality of an app, which is extremely important from a user experience standpoint. The assumption held by many who were looking to HTML5, was that users would access apps across devices, from desktop to mobile. In reality, users will pick the one with the best functionality and naturally gravitate to the platform on which an app works best.

When it comes to mobile, an app has to be developed with the mobile user in mind. Nothing is more frustrating for a developer than devoting time across multiple platforms, only to discover later that your users prefer one device over another. No matter what, developing across multiple platforms takes time, energy, and thoughtfulness.

2. App Stores Deliver Discoverability, HTML5-Only Sites Are Out in the Woods

It’s easy to create a browser link with a homescreen icon for a mobile device, but much harder to change cultural practices. The challenge HTML5 publishers experience is creating an easy and positive experience to access hybrid apps. Mobile users now expect to be told to download an app and, instinctively, users search for apps in stores. Google and Apple dominate these stores and have thus far not made steps towards including HTML5 sites.

Facebook created the most publicized “universal store,” listing both native and sites in HTML5 — some believe as a way to circumvent Apple and Google’s app stores. With the hopes of coaxing them to include HTML5 apps, Facebook assembled a network of developers under the W3C but so far that strategy has not shown traction.

3. Hybrid Apps Can’t Depend on Mobile Browsers

I thought that at least one major console game would be released or re-released using WebGL. It may have happened, but in lieu of the previous point, the big mobile browser players like Chrome and Safari have shown no intention to grow their browsers to fully support HTML5 technologies. For example, WebGL, a central tool for 3D game development has been incompatible with the aforementioned mobile browsers.

Compatibility is one issue, but there’s also speed on the mobile browser. Findings from a study we conducted earlier this year showed that HTML5 running on mobile browsers was ten to seven hundred times slower than when running on a desktop. In fact, on average mobile browsers were 889 times slower. Implicit within this data is that a large percentage of mobile users have a poor experience when accessing web apps that are graphical in nature.

4. Fragmentation, Fragmentation, Fragmentation

Is the name of the game when it comes to hybrid apps. Anyone who has built a website has experienced browser compatibility issues. Double these across platforms and you have a headache. For example, Sean Soria, an engineer for Gamzee described some of the issues they faced building Skyscraper City in a guest post for Facebook’s HTML5 blog.

In the post Soria describes a hack to increase speed on the DOM “is fake 3D transforms on your CSS. That triggers hardware acceleration on most mobile devices, resulting in better performance than Canvas, for example.” This is awesome — except the workaround doesn’t work on Android phones. There are many issues like this, where both problems and solutions are distinct on each device.

5. HTML5 Isn’t Robust Enough

From what I’ve seen, the hype has led to many people overestimating how much developers like using JavaScript. Is JavaScript great for cross platform development? Yes. Do developer prefer it over possible alternatives? Not quite yet. For more complicated apps, especially games, object-oriented and more strongly typed languages are still preferred by developers.

So, HTML5 didn’t pan quite how we thought it was going to. It turned into a scapegoat for Facebook and possibly one of the most overhyped advancements of the mobile generation. If HTML5 truly is the future, than we’re much farther from that future then we thought. That’s not to say that HTML5 won’t get it right some day – just not any time soon.

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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I just spoke to Google’s Pete Lepage about the Chrome experiment a Google team built in partnership with Cirque du Soleil … and about what it means for the future of web technologies on desktop, tablets, and smartphones.

The project is Movi Kanti Revo, which just won an award from TheFWA.com, and it’s an experiment in how to build and control native web pages and apps in news ways — for example, by accessing your device’s camera and allowing you to point your way through the interactive experience by tilting your head. In addition, it’s an experiment in creating full-motion photorealistic environments that play out in front of you like an interactive movie … all without a single visible movie embed.

“With Chrome experiments, we’re always looking for new ways to ship new technology,” Lepage said. “We’re always trying to do something completely different, completely unexpected. That’s where navigation came from.”

The technology is entirely client-side — nothing runs server-side in Movi Kanti Revo. Site developers used HTML to get the elements on-stage, and then created complex, nuanced transitions and transforms via new CSS3 animation properties. The team used Javascript to do facial detection for motion through the experience and changing the “camera” orientation live according to a user’s gestures, and delivered high-quality video in Google’s own WebM format for Chrome users on a desktop machine, but substituting H.264 for mobile users.

“It definitely took us a few months to build,” Lepage told me. “We spent a lot of time with designers … a lot of those scenes are hand-drawn.”

On desktop, however, there are limited sensors to access — primarily the webcam. Lepage sees more possibilities in mobile and is excited about what the native web can do in mobile.

“I think this is one of those things that is really going to take off on the web in a year or so,” he said. “And not just for casual games but for the big games too. Imagine playing Halo and having the webcam going automatically to chat with your friends.”

On mobile, there’s more sensor availability: orientation, movement, and, in newer phones, a front-facing camera. That promises to give developers abilities in the future that can only be imagined on an Xbox 360 Kinect-like environment today.

“That what’s exciting,” Lepage told me, “giving users access to things they previously had to buy special hardware for.”

And it does take some hardware: Movi Kanti Revo got the fan on my MacBook Air going after just a few minutes. Lepage says that’s probably the GPU, as everything on the site is hardware accelerated. But they had tested on Nexus 7 tablets and Chromebooks — not particularly beefy machines — and had seen “pretty good performance,” he said.

But hardware, including mobile hardware, is getting better every few months. And with it grow the possibilities for developers to create new experiences for their audiences.

Image credits: Google, Cirque du Soleil

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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In fact, according to the recent survey by mobile app tools vendor Kendo UI, 94 percent of developers are either using HTML5, or plan to start using it this year, leaving only a minuscule six percent who have no plans to develop with HTML5 before 2013 rolls around in just two short months.

That’s the kind of stat that is sometimes easy to manipulate when there’s a larger percentage in the wishy-washier “planning” segment, but not in this case, with a full 63 percent of developers using HTML5 today.

That’s impressive.

HTML5 is an updated version of the old-school hyper-text markup language that makes up much of the web today. It enables developers to build on their existing knowledge of web technologies such as HTML, Javascript, and cascading style sheets to create mobile apps through frameworks such as Adobe’s PhoneGap rather than having to learn Objective-C to write full-native iPhone/iPad apps, or Java to write Android apps. Probably even more importantly, by using cross-platform technologies like PhoneGap, HTML5 enables developers to write their apps once and deploy on all major mobile platforms.

Given the numbers who are already using HTML5, it’s no shock that 82 percent of developers also say that the technology will be important to their jobs in the next year, and a further 12 percent believe it will be become important within the next two years.

Developers’ rationale for using and preferring HTML5 is no shock to anyone who’s ever developed native apps for multiple mobile platforms. Sixty-two percent said that HTML5′s ability to enable cross-platform support was an important factor in choosing the technology, with another third saying that the availability of tools and code libraries make it appealing.

But the biggest reason developers like HTML5?

Familiarity. Almost three-quarters of developers said that HTML, Javascript, and CSS were familiar languages which enabled easy access to mobile app markets.

And what about Facebook’s move away from HTML5. Apparently, that hasn’t shaken developers’ belief in the technology — half of them weren’t even aware of the move. Of those who did, however, while 17 percent had less faith in HTML5 after the news, 18 percent had more faith.

The survey is obviously from a company with a vested interest in HTML5 adoption, but it jibes with what I’ve heard from people like Andi Gutmans, key developer of the PHP programming language and current CEO of Zend, who is pushing what he calls cloud-connected mobile apps and just released a version of Zend Studio that enables developers to build native mobile apps with familiar web technologies.

Which, frankly, just makes sense if you don’t want to build the same app three times for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone … and if your app is not the most computationally intensive app in the world and absolutely needs to be fully native for performance reasons.

photo credit: codepo8 via photopin cc

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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MENLO PARK, Calif. — We have a very productive society. In fact, of the 1 billion people on Facebook, 251 million play games every month. And of those 80 million play arcade bubble shooter games. Probably during work hours.

Those are the sorts of details that Facebook’s game leadership team shared today at a press lunch at its headquarters. They offered a deeper dive into the symbiotic connection between Facebook and games, and the close connection with game companies such as Zynga.

Dan Rose, the head of partnerships at Facebook, acknowledged the importance of games to the social network through its history. It was the first part of the application platform to take off, with hits such as Zombies and Zynga Poker. Social transformed the game experience and helped Facebook win the social-network wars.

“Games are a huge and important part of what our users do on Facebook every day, and they are an important part of what they do on mobile,” Rose said.

Alex Schultz, (pictured at bottom) a member of the growth team at Facebook, said that the big change has been the increase of diversity of games, genres, and developers during the past year. He said the data shows that successes come in three categories.

Some games are hits that start big and dwindle over time. Other successful games stabilize and find a regular audience, like Kixeye’s War Commander, which continues to generate activity and revenue for the social game developer. War Commander doesn’t have a huge number of player, but 10 percent of them buy virtual goods, far more than usual. And then some games start big, dip, and then recover because players become constantly re-engaged with it as more friends play.

Schultz said that Facebook tries to make the latter happen by creating a lot of avenues for players to notice what their friends are playing and to communicate that them in a way that won’t be considered spam. Growth in games is no longer about cramming as many users at the top of the funnel (just getting them to join) anymore, Schultz said.

Mobile has become a huge priority, as Facebook now has 600 million mobile users. Facebook launched its App Center platform for installing games and it is generating lots of clicks for both mobile and desktop users now.

It is still inherently harder for Facebook to make money in mobile versus the desktop. On the desktop, developers are required to use Facebook Credits as a way for users to pay for in-app virtual goods. Those developers share 30 percent of the revenues with Facebook. On mobile, the developers don’t share that money with Facebook, and share it instead with Apple on iOS or other platform owners. Instead, Facebook makes money through ads in a newsfeed stream that helps games get noticed.

But Facebook is increasingly important on mobile as a way for games to get discovered among hundreds of thousands of apps, said Sean Ryan, the head of game partnerships. Ryan said the App Center is a great way for people to find games because a game will appear higher in the center if more of your friends are playing it.

“I sometimes hear developers say they are not on Facebook but they are on mobile,” Ryan said. “Increasingly, it is not either or. It is ‘and.’ As people spend more time on mobile, as developers move to mobile, we are moving with them. Facebook is the glue.”

Ryan said that early attempts to share in-game announcements with players were viewed as spam. But by doing it in a more controlled and smarter way, developers are now seeing clicks on such notifications in the 30 percent to 40 percent range, Ryan said. For instance, your Facebook Timeline may show that you defeated five enemies in Playdom’s Marvel Avengers game during the week. If friends see that, they might click on it and install the game.

Ryan said he expects that strategy games will be big in 2013. He said that hardcore and midcore game companies will make more use of 3D graphics on the increasingly capable platform.

Just a year ago, most of the game traffic was for Zynga’s simulation games. Now it is more diverse, with arcade games, puzzles, casino games, and action titles taking off.

“The next explosion of genres will be for core and midcore games,” Ryan said.

On top of that, geographic diversity is growing. Peak Games in Turkey is growing fast, as are European game publishers such as King.com, Rovio, and Wooga. In Russia, Ryan went to an event where 150 developers showed up. In Israel, he attended an event where 450 game developers showed up.

Upcoming games for the fourth quarter that look promising, Ryan said, include Stormfall: Age of War from Plarium, Wizard of Oz from Spooky Cool Labs, Fresh Deck Poker from Idle Games, Full Bloom from Playdom, and CityVille 2 from Zynga. He said five more major unannounced games are coming for the desktop in November. On mobile, he said big games include Hay Day from Supercell, Live Hold ‘em Pro from Dragonplay, NFL Pro 2013 from Gameloft, CSR Racing from NaturalMotion and Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder.

Facebook has launched real-money gambling in the United Kingdom with one game developer, Gamesys, and it is awaiting the results of that launch.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

This post was written by Jaafer Haidar, vice president of mobile at cloud-based content platform Synacor.

Every once in a while, necessity brings strange bedfellows together towards a common goal. Apollo Creed and Rocky joined forces to take on Clubber Lang in Rocky III, Batman and Catwoman teamed up against Bane in The Dark Knight Rises … and lately my wife and sister are working together to prevent me from trying skydiving. Either way, unexpected couplings must occur to ensure success where one party couldn’t go it alone. When you take a look at the future of mobile, HTML5 and Digital Rights Management (DRM) are an unstoppable team, but they need each other in order to win the code wars.

Native Apps Mean Everyone Has To Sacrifice

Let’s first admit something: We don’t love apps — we love what apps give us. The content we want, when we want it, in the palm of our hand. It’s all about the delivery and experience; we could care less whether it’s in the form of an installed app or a web app as long as it is always there at our fingertips. That said, there is an impact for all when a native app is created.

• For Publishers: Native apps mean developing an app for every platform or sacrificing part of the audience you’re trying to reach. Developing and supporting all these apps is very expensive.

• For Consumers (all of us): (a) Hope there’s an app for your mobile platform (b) If you have devices operating on different platforms, you need to purchase the app for each platform (c) Hope the app is specifically designed for your phone and tablet.

Content Should Live Free but that Doesn’t Mean it is Free.

There are HTML5 apps and games that rival and even outperform native applications. The biggest brands such as Google, YouTube, LinkedIn and OpenTable (among others) are championing HTML5 — and delivering the goods. The only thing holding back HTML5 from killing native apps is DRM.

Let’s be honest, production studios are in business to make money from the content they produce. Right now, native apps provide the protections studios require, but the ironic thing is that every video delivered through native apps is not Flash-based. Publishers have already done the heavy lifting for HTML5 delivery. They want to deliver videos in a mobile app that works across all devices — phone, tablet, laptop, and connected TVs. They want to build once, deliver everywhere. Publishers will then be able to get out of the dev shop business, and premium content will flourish online. HTML5 DRM enables this to happen — opening the floodgates.

HTML5’s Missing Key

Before the tech-must-be-free purists get excited, let’s discuss the current landscape. HTML5 is the promise of the web being a platform where content can live freely; a world where the device doesn’t matter, whether it’s your iPhone, iPad, Android device, laptop, or connected TV – all you need is the Web and you can get your stuff anytime anywhere. I agree 100% with this sentiment (in fact, I co-founded a company based on these exact principles of freedom). It’s a beautiful promise, but you know what’s missing from its current form? Video.

Video is one of the most popular thing to do online after checking email, conducting a search, or using Facebook. As tablets and phones are rapidly becoming the way most people use the web, few sites outside of YouTube have worked some back-end magic to ensure you can watch what you want when you want it. Ever visit your favorite site on an iPad only to see a black box where you could swear there should be a video? It sucks.

There are three things to consider with mobile web video:

• Free or not, most video is in Flash format: That’s how it’s been forever, and there’s a whole ecosystem of rights management, advertising, social, and more tools at play.

• The Chicken and the Egg: Publishers need a full ecosystem of tools to make money. At the same time, we’ve seen limited evolution of a non-Flash web video ecosystem because toolmakers need publisher demand before they invest in creating the tools. HTML5 DRM is the catalyst for the ecosystem’s development.

• Native Apps fill the Void: Nobody supports Flash on mobile. Not Apple or Microsoft or Android … and soon not even Adobe. Flash on mobile is a dying technology. If you want to watch videos from your favorite places like Hulu, HBO, or even TMZ, then don’t go into the web browser, visit the app store and download the native app.

And therein lies the rub: if you want to watch videos on your mobile, download the app. The reason? Within native apps, the video content can be protected. Of course, if you get the app, you’re tied to your device (iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.). This is where DRM comes in handy for the ecosystem.

HTML5 Needs DRM to Win

Yes, there are some who believe DRM in any form goes against the very idea of HTML5. This ideal forces them to make a decision: Either believe that a video-less mobile web world can win or understand that consumers want the good stuff and to get it, it needs to be protected.

Even the large “Internet companies” recognize this. A previously proposed joint HTML5 DRM proposal from Google, Microsoft, and Netflix was a step in the right direction. Without a doubt, the industry needs a standard way to protect and deliver video over the web.

So lace up and get in the ring, my freedom loving friends. HTML5 and DRM are coming together for the better of the web – like Rocky and Apollo – it’s inevitable and only natural. DRM will fulfill the very promise of HTML5 — an open world where we’re free from device lock-in, and the web is the platform that rightfully wins.

Jaafer Haidar is head of Synacor’s mobile and multi-screen strategy. He is an expert and visionary in the power that HTML5 provides to consumer electronics OEMs and service providers in creating the best possible consumer experience across devices.

But the Famo.us user interface, based on an extended conversation I had with founder Steve Newcomb, is really cool. It’s a lot like the touch interface that Tom Cruise used in the film Minority Report. The neat thing is that this 3D interface is completely browser-based and it requires no plug-ins or clunky HTML5 coding. Newcomb says his small team found a clever way to engineer 3D capability into a web browser without all of the usual problems.

That clever coding — a rendering engine by a company with just three employees including co-founder Mark Lu — could result in web pages that surprise and delight you or games that you just start playing as soon as you visit a web site. Developers who sign up with Famo.us will eventually get access to the technology and be able to create interesting applications on top of it.

“We looked at HTML5 for 18 months and found problems in the web browser that won’t make it perform,” Newcomb said. “So we could have waited for the browser companies to fix the code, or just do something ourselves.”

In a newsletter, Newcomb said, “In short, after many years of development, we finally solved the performance issues that have plagued complex web apps.  App layouts, animations and designs that were only possible in native apps are now within the reach of all web developers.  We hope our accomplishment unleashes a wave of web app development like we’ve never seen before.”

He added, “Famo.us enables web developers to build apps across multiple devices and provides developers with a view layer, app layouts, scaffolding, UI and UX components, themes, fonts and JavaScript plugins.”

Big companies like Facebook and Wooga have tried to stretch HTML5 to be able to do more, but they gave up and had no hope that it would enable things like 3D user interfaces. The frame rates for HTML5 pages are just too unpredictable. Newcomb concluded the same thing.

“Everybody has banged their heads against the wall,” he said. “We came to the conclusion that normal web methods would not work. So we looked at the problem from other vectors.”

Newcomb isn’t describing the technology much this yet, but he has released a cool demo (see video at bottom) that hints at the possibilities. And he has created a replica of a Twitter iPad app that runs better than the original.

The fact that Famo.us, a tiny startup, has come up with this technology is interesting. But Newcomb has a noteworthy background. He co-founder Powerset, the search company that Microsoft acquired in 2008 for more than $100 million. Powerset became Microsoft’s Bing search engine, but Newcomb left to consider his next big thing.

“We asked ourselves, ‘What if we approached this the way a gaming engineer would?’” Newcomb said. “We would talk directly to the” graphics processing unit (GPU, or graphics chip). He added, “We saw Javascript could do a raw game rendering engine, but we found a way to render an app and pass that render to the GPU, skipping all the things that we were waiting on the browser companies to fix. We found a way to bypass it by having a direct mathematical conversation with the GPU.”

If that doesn’t make sense to you, that’s OK. It’s just a hint that Famo.us came up with a clever solution. The solution is not a plug-in, not a Web GL technology, not Adobe Flash. There is nothing to download. As an example, they found that math equations known as transforms were one reason browsers loaded slowly. So his team wrote their own transforms which could load much faster. His software works at 60 frames per second.

“We solved a web application developer’s problem,” he said. “We have a novel approach of making web apps themselves” perform well.

Rivals include companies Game Closure, Ludei, Spaceport i/o, and others. But Newcomb believes he can do better than the solutions those companies offer (mainly for fast-action games). Those solutions are also aimed at 2D games, not 3D.

One test is that web pages written via Famo.us and its Javascript code can load an infinite amount of data, so you can scroll down forever. It works fine on web pages and on mobile. With a 3D user interface, you can spin the interface and stop it on any given object and then drill down on that object.

“Apps are just going to look beautiful,” sort of like Flipboard, Newcomb said.

To get the technology into the market, Famo.us will create its own applications first. (It’s not going to do a Minority Report user interface). Then it will polish a software developer kit and share it with third-party developers. Famo.us apps will run on Android, iOS, PC, Macs, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo devices. Newcomb says it isn’t clear yet just how easy it will be for developers to program the Famo.us way, but he is sure it will be worth it.

Famo.us has raised $1.1 million from Greylock Partners, Naval Ravikant, Javelin Ventures, and Interwest Venture Partners.

Newcomb is speaking at the HTML5 developers conference on Oct. 15 and 16. Here’s a video demo below:

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Beautiful iOS and Windows Phone game Contre Jour has made the jump to HTML5 and the web, with a version tailor-made for browsers. It’s stunning.

In a meeting with Contre Jour creator Max Hryniv and Internet Explorer GM Ryan Gavin, I saw it up close on a Windows 8 tablet. While its designers built Contre Jour in HTML5, it feels just like a native app. Using my fingers, I helped main character Petit move around the screen and complete his mission of capturing balls of light. That I was playing a browser-based game that requires multitouch to beat it was pretty cool.

“This is the most ambitious game ever brought to HTML5,” Gavin said excitedly. “This represents a third wave of development following web apps and native apps.”

Contre Jour on the browser lets you play 30 of the game’s 100 levels in a sort of long-form demo. Not only is the game showing how far developers can push HTML5, it also gives people a chance to try the game before buying it as a Windows 8 native app. (See the best Windows 8 apps so far.)

“There’s always trade-offs when it comes to developing in HTML5 versus native,” Hryniv told me. “At this point, it’s easier to develop native than HTML5.”

Because Windows 8 is, at its heart, meant for tablets, Contre Jour is a showcase for how well touch-based web apps can work on the platform. Microsoft clearly wants to enable immersive HTML5 app experiences and show developers how it’s done. Microsoft partnered with Hryniv and Clarity Consulting to bring the app to life, especially to showcase the power of Internet Explorer 10.

Gavin admitted that Internet Explorer lost its way several years ago some time between IE6 and IE7 and that’s why it lost so much market share to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. With Internet Explorer 10 and its push into engrossing HTML5 applications, he said Microsoft is signalling its desire to be on the forefront of browser technology again.

“There was a point where we stopped innovating,” Gavin said. “With IE7 and IE8, we were playing catch up. But with IE9 and 10, we’re changing the browser landscape. We’re building for hardware and providing a better experience.”

While I’m not convinced game developers will embrace HTML5 over native, I can imagine many app developers for news and media embracing these richer experiences. Pulse, for example, already has.

Check out the video below of Contre Jour on HTML5 for more.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Sunglass, a GitHub-like platform for 3D design, is exiting the cold caves of beta.

Built around collaboration, Sunglass allows designers to work together on projects in real-time via the cloud. Unlike with software-based design programs, this is done via the web browser, which means Sunglass is powerful while still being lightweight.

“Our long-term hope is to be the Github of 3D,” co-founder Nitin Rao told VentureBeat in June.

With exit from beta, Sunglass has added a number of key features to take that collaboration a step further. For one, Sunglass now allows users to check the revision histories of projects, which is a big deal when a lot of designers are working on the same thing simultaneously.

Another notable addition is the ability to selectively control access to certain components of a project. This will allow project managers to keep the larger projects secret even while dishing out individual parts to designers.

Further, Sunglass now offers a web-based design gallery, which the company says will be ideal for situations when clients would like to check in on the progress of their projects.

Also key are more integrated plug-ins, which allow Sunglass users to work on their projects alongside desktop-based programs like Softworks and Autodesk Inventor. This is a big deal because it reduces the chances that designers will avoid using Sunglass because of incompatibility with what they are already working on.

Founded last May, the San Francisco-based Sunglass has so far raised $1.8 million in seed funding.

Photo: Flickr/WhiteAfrican