Browser Vs Application in Mobile(BAUG meetup)

Last Saturday I attended a meet up organized by Bangalore Android User Group. I would like to acknowledge the organizers and presenters for putting up a great show. There were two main things that came up during the meet on which I would like to focus on.
Firstly an interesting discussion about application versus HTML V. Who is going to win in terms of customer adaptability? Well as far as Enterprise applications are concerned Applications would be the right solution mainly because of four reasons.

1. Applications are more secure than Browsers.

2. For Enterprise applications robustness is key. The app must work in all the circumstances whether the network is there or not or it is responding slowly due to some glitches. We have seen it our day today experience and particularly I have seen in case of Enterprise apps development, network outage is a common phenomenon. Let me explain this with a use case.
Suppose a courier guy is delivering goods and each time he delivers, he has to send the time stamp and POD (Proof of Delivery) to the Server. It is quite possible, while moving in the town he reaches a spot where there is no network or flaky network. In this case if he using a browser based app, he wouldn’t be able to open the app, while in case of installed app he can easily complete the transaction and the details could be sent to the backend server when he reaches inside the network. Basically to the end user the network availability doesn’t matter, for him the app should work seamlessly even when he is out of network coverage. The app can easily be designed in such a way to provide a seamless experience to end user.

3. The other most important concern for enterprise is money. In case of browser app, the user has to download the complete page even if he has to send less than a KB of info to the server. In case of app the same form is instantly available and the transaction could be completed by sending/receiving lesser amount of data, thus saving cost.

4. The other important thing is installed app can take advantage of device specific features like GPS, can manage data in a better way by using SQL and can use a host of other features not available to browser.

The other interesting topic was comparison between QNX and Android or rather adaptability of Android as an OS for use in automotive industry. Android was built on the premise of being used as an OS to be used for mobile devices specifically to enhance the browsing experience. QNX is a typical RTOS, a pre-emptive multitasking OS. Android being an open source OS has still to prove its mark in terms of reliability and market acceptance as a RTOS. With recent news of RIM acquiring QNX, the proposition becomes still more interesting (http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_4114_1.html).