Alex Russell – The Mobile Web: MIA

I found this recent talk by Chrome's Standards Tech Lead very eye-opening. He talks about some shocking trends in the ecosystem that’s causing the web to essentially disappear from the vast majority of mobile devices being sold across the world. His main points are:

1. Most of the new devices coming online are using cheap low-powered chips that are not very well suited for running single-core JavaScript

2. The web ecosystem is not helping things by bundling megabytes of code on each page

3. Network speeds are not helping either: the average LTE speed is decreasing because the bandwidth is now being shared across more people.

4. Apple is deliberately restricting the mobile web by (a) not investing in safari and keep it lagging behind other engines, and (b) not allowing other browsers to compete.

5. Usage of web (as opposed to native apps) in mobile devices has fallen below 7%, and unless things change soon, nobody will have any incentive to target the web and it will go the way of COBOL and mainframes.