Following up on the PastryKit discussion, I was thinking about what phones will be like once the processing power, hardware hooks, and UI elements are in place to make HTML / JavaScript / CSS apps that are competitive with native apps.
I recall Steve Jobs saying that with iPhone Apple was moving the competition from a hardware feature comparison to a software comparison. (I'm paraphrasing and couldn't find a link to the actual quote - any help from out there would be appreciated). What is interesting is if all Webkit-based browsers can implement the same functionality, where will the distinction in phones come from?
Hardware features as before? Overall design? Software integration? App discovery and navigation? Multimedia playback, distribution, and discovery? Or will it remain specialized apps that work well on certain phones and not on others (for example, games that use intensive graphics)?
I think recent history has shown that hardware advantages are fleeting while true software integration takes longer to implement. Google has made impressive progress with Android and may be successful in getting hardware manufacturers to lower their margins and place Apple in the "premium price" category as they are with computers. Other phone manufacturers (Palm, RIM, Microsoft) have all faced delays workarounds to assemble the pieces needed for premium mobile ecosystems.
One significant difference between the smartphone market and the PC market that preceeded it is that the phones are primarily content consumers rather than content producers which makes interoperability much easier. This may lead to a marketplace that supports multiple OS and hardware platforms indefinately.
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