Two big mobile announcements this week:  Microsoft announced a deal with Nokia to take
Silverlight mobile and Google announced the compatibility of Google Gears with
Windows Mobile devices. Bringing some competition to a mobile RIA market dominated
by Flash Lite can only be a good thing. While MS has a long way to go, a
partnership with Nokia isn’t a bad place to start considering their 57% share of
the global smartphone market.

What’s interesting about the Google Gears announcement is
that it brings offline web app functionality to mobile. Most people are
familiar with the idea for PCs in the form of Adobe AIR so it’s interesting to
see a similar concept for mobile from Google. This could prove a very
attractive platform for certain types of applications. Hopstop, that means you.

Dan Neumann