Does the rise of apps mean the fall of the web?

"Proclaiming the web dead seems to be something of a trend. First pop legend Prince announced its imminent demise, and now we get the same prediction from a more expert source, tech magazine Wired. In its September cover story, the journal says it’s only a matter of time before the web as we know it disappears. According to research from Cisco, HTML traffic visible through a browser is currently only about a quarter (23%) of the overall traffic, down from nearly 50% ten years ago.




Planet of the Apps



One cause of its dramatic drop is people like us. Yes, the web is on a downward spiral in large part due to the huge popularity of mobile computing and apps. If you’ve got a smartphone, think of how pervasive apps are in your life.



You probably use an app to check your email, to browse your social media stuff, to listen to online radio. You discover what’s happening in the world through RSS feeds and news apps. You communicate using Instant Messaging apps and you chill out with music apps. The list is endless and there are more and more apps for every aspect of our lives coming out all the time. All of these bypass the web.



Billions of nails in the coffin



Nonetheless, it’s still hard to believe that apps can have such a dramatic effect on something as central to our lives. That is until you look at some of the figures.



According to a Juniper Research report out in July, the number of “consumer-oriented handset downloads” is expected to rise from less than 2.6 billion per-year in 2009 to more than 25 billion in 2015.



In March this year, Ovi Store was getting around 1.5 million downloads each day — which works out to 22 applications downloaded every single second!



This year it took less than three months for web and mobile instant messaging (IM) aggregator eBuddy Mobile Messenger app to zoom past a million downloads on Ovi.



By 2012 it’s estimated that the mobile apps market will be worth an estimated $17.5 billion.



World Died Web?



If mobile computing carries on growing at such a pace, maybe the end of the web is nigh after all. What do you think? Will the World Wide Web eventually become the World Died Web or is news of its demise premature?"

source