Genuitec today announced a new set of features for MobiOne that will be available in September. MobiOne is a mobile app development service that uses on-line Web standards to create mobile apps for a variety of handsets.
What is MobiOne?
The idea is that instead of having to learn device-specific programming skill, developers can use the same standards as they would on-line to create mobile apps. This is another way of getting around incompatibility issues for mobile developers. By using existing systems like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which are all incredibly widely used on-line, it allows a lot more programmers to develop mobile applications.
What are the updates?
- Developers can now use MobiOne to create Palm Pre applications
- iPhone developers can now access the geo-location features of the 3.0 OS
- Developers can use HTML 5 local storage and offline data caching capabilities
So far these services are only available for iPhone 3.0 and Palm Pre, but Android and Blackberry are also on the cards.
From the release:
“In mid-September we’re releasing version 1.0 of MobiOne as a full fledged mobile Web application builder, but ahead of that release we’re thrilled to introduce the Palm Pre as a supported device,” said Wayne Parrot, vice president of product development for Genuitec. “As the HTML 5 adoption curve continues to grow and enterprises are realizing its powerful potential, Genuitec is enabling developers to utilize iPhone 3.0 geolocation, local storage and offline data caching in their mobile applications – all of which used to be confined only to native apps.”
“Companies that are taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude toward mobile development can quickly and inexpensively get their enterprise data online in a mobile specific environment using MobiOne,” said Maher Masri, president and CEO for Genuitec. “The power of the mobile Web is greater than that of native applications and app-type stores; in reality the Web itself is the store and it has the lowest barrier to entry.”
What we think?
The first service like this that I encountered was the very similar RhoMobile offering. I prefer the Genuitec offering though, as it’s not limited to HTML.
