[jbail]

I think Apple and Google can protect their distribution channels and support mobile web as an equal to native.

They can maintain the same approval processes, charge the same fees, and enforce submissions of your mobile apps to the same places if you want inclusion in their app stores.

For mobile web, it could be as simple as compressing a folder of specially named HTML and JS files or providing an absolute URL where the main "executable" HTML file lives.

In the end, Apple and Google can make the same amount of money from mobile apps vs native apps. I don't find many reasons they would care how the app is made (except that maybe they want "exclusive" apps that are only on one platform or the other --- or they want to not include absolute URL mobile web apps because you can submit an app and change it entirely the next day by changing the files on your server...though you could get around this by mandating that your app be submitted as packaged HTML/JS)

[nikcub]

I hope this happens, esp with the solution you outlines where the app is just the html+js+css etc. zipped up into a distro form (is there an open standard for manifest files in this type of distribution of web app?).

The only thing I can see possibly being a concern is UI consistency - web apps are a free-for-all. Apple may release a UI kit