PRMan

Google issued an interesting update to its iPhone app the other day. Aside from slipping a few more of its innovations under the radar and into the Apple universe, its now branding its suite of web services as ‘Apps’. While you have to use Google’s overarching app to access them, until now its online services have always been distinct from the downloadable, on-your-iPhone apps we’re used to.

This is the key thing, almost all of Google’s services are web-based rather than ‘native’ -  based on the phone. This sounds like a pedantic distinction but is actually an important difference. The key thing is that Google is making its ‘Apps’ almost indistinguishable from something based on your phone. This has big implications for the future of ‘Apps’ and company web presences as a whole.

The increasing functionality of web-pages, fueled by the growing interest in Javascript and HTML5, will soon break down the need to distinguish between an app and a webpage. Growing functionality and consumer demand are pointing towards one thing – brands need to get their acts together where mobile is concerned. I wrote a post about catering for mobile some time back, and the need for a functional, credible mobile web presence has only become more pronounced. The time to catch the wave is now.

Soon the distinction between a native app and a your mobile web-page will become much less pronounced. This means brands have many more options to prepare their information and content for access via mobile devices. It’s no longer a choice of doing an app as a promotional device – if your audience wants to access your content via mobile, you need to make it an easy and worthwhile experience.

The publishing world for one is getting better at mobile with a large proportion now having mobile versions of their web pages or apps. The Guardian has been leading the pack for some time here. However, many are still behind the curve especially the trade media.

The next step is for the laggards to catch-up and for the leaders to show what can really be done with mobile. For many brands – especially in publishing – this experimentation will be the deciding factor between maintaining relevance or becoming obsolete. All brands in sectors and industries whose audience demands it should be experimenting too.

In a this vein, Google has just launched a quarterly online magazine: Think Quarterly, with a nice mobile interface. More on this soon.