Today, Amazon announced that their Appstore for Android [1] now supports the submission of HTML5 apps [2]. This is a game changer for HTML5 [3] because now there is a direct channel to consumers.
As I wrote almost a year ago:
software delivery on the mobile platform is, at least for the foreseeable future, firmly established via app stores. And app stores cater to native apps (100% native and/or hybrid) only. The average person will not look for useful apps via their device’s browser: that route is still a jungle. And, at this point, there is no viable pure play mobile web app delivery channel.
Today, it’s still true that the most convenient mechanism for app delivery on mobile devices (and increasingly desktops) is via various app stores. And until today, HTML5 apps were not included in these app stores (unless they were wrapped by some hybrid-web container like PhoneGap [5]).
But now with Amazon’s announcement, HTML5 [6] apps without any native container can be submitted into their Appstore. What’s more, these apps can take advantage of monetization features like In-App purchasing [7] using Amazon’s API.
Now HTML5 apps have a direct channel to consumers along with an API to make HTML5 app developers money. HTML5 apps are now icon-ized and people don’t have to use a search engine to find them!
As Mike Hines [8] of Amazon puts it:
Starting today, you can submit your web apps and mobile optimized web sites and have them merchandised alongside native apps on Amazon and Kindle Fire in nearly 200 countries worldwide, without any third-party software or doing any native app development.
This is big news for HTML5 developers. A direct channel to the masses and monetization APIs to boot – what more could you ask for? Standby folks because it’s about to get even more interesting, as I’m willing to bet that Google and Apple will follow suit in the near future.