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I don't know if any of you are sports fans out there ;) but if you missed last night's OKC Thunder, you missed an absolute awesome game!  The Thunder were ahead at half but then trailed much of the third quarter.  They regained the lead in the final moments of the third quarter.  The Dallas Mavs would not give up though as Carter hit the go ahead shot with only 1.4 seconds left.  Thunder fans were shocked as they hoped to have already won the game.  The Thunder inbounded the ball to Kevin Durant where he drained a very long 3 for the win!  You know what just watch it.  It's a lot better that way!

http://www.nba.com/video/games/thunder/2011/12/29/0021100035_dal_okc_play8.nba/

Told you so!  Anyways this blog really is not about the Thunder or basketball, just had to give my hometeam some props for a great game.  What this blog is really about... well it was going to be about my iPhone app I'm making but I left the sketch at home so I'll talk about something different.  The other day during our Old Hat's 15 days of Christmas I was asked about iPhone apps.  Well I want to take this time to expand a little more on the trends and advantages/disadvantages of a mobile website versus an iphone app.  You can read my original post here http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=339970632695359 and search for other Q&A sessions on twitter by searching for #OH15Days.

Like I mentioned in the answer, I really see the market begin to blend iphone apps and mobile web apps into a single entity.  What I mean by this is complex native apps will be loaded on the phone and then will reference a mobile web app hosted on a server else where.  This will allow for the greatest flexibility.  Think of it this way: You have a really cool web application that your customers subscribe to.  They buy into what you a selling, but hate having to go to their computers to check the site... *ie Facebook.  People have busy lives, and the less you restrict the ways they can access your great content, the better.   What's so great about today's technology is that if you really need to you can access the web from your phone.  Your on-the-go customer now has access to your content anywhere they have cell coverage.  Great!  Only drawback is that in your rush to get your product out, you failed to create it in a mobile friendly manner.  Developing for mobile devices can be costly but they have a distinct advantage over their non-mobile counterparts.   Buttons are easier to click and forms are made easier to read.  This amounts to a greater likelihood that your customer will return to your site via their phone, which means they will visit your site more often than than a strictly computer web based site.

I pulled some stats from 7 different sites of ours from the past couple months.  I chose sites of different varieties, clients, and targeted audiences from across the country to get more accurate results on a national basis.  Of the sites the browser usage results are below:
Chrome - 13%
FireFox/Mozilla Based - 23%
Safari - 23%
Internet Explorer - 26%
Andriod - 6% 
Other - 9% 

Of those hits the mobile usage:
iPhone / iPad / iPod - 21%
Android - 9.5%

This means that about 30% of the visits to the sites came from a mobile device.  This trend will continue to grow as more and more smartphones and smartdevices emerge.

But there are limitations to a strictly web based application even if it has a mobile design implemented.  There are features on phones and other devices that can only be accessed via a native app.  So if you wish to take advantage of them you will have to have the native app process the information and then send it back to you.  This is why the hybrid apps are appearing.  Well I would like to go on more about this but this blog has taken a little to long too compile so I must be going.  I hope that helps explain in a little more detail the merging of web/mobile native apps into one and why it is important to think about making your site more mobile friendly.  Thanks for your time.