Has the emergence of the mobile web destroyed the market for native applications for mobile devices? Michael Mace, a former VP of Product Planning at Palm who's now a principal at Rubicon Consulting, says yes on his blog today. He notes that although the number of smartphones has increased, the "attractiveness" to potential developers has been decreasing. And now with the growth of the mobile web, those developers are likely to be working on applications that can be delivered over a fast mobile connection to a handheld or smartphone browser.

Michael notes:

"If you're a mobile developer, you should consider stopping native app development and shifting to a mobile-optimized website. That's what Elia [Freedman, CEO of Infinity Softworks] did, and he said it's amazing how much easier it is to get things done. Even mobile game developers, who you'd think would be the last to abandon native development, are looking at web distribution."

The advent of Adobe AIR, which I discussed earlier today, and other similar technologies from Google, Microsoft and others, would seem to hasten that trend. Apple is set to release development tools for the iPhone sometime soon, which could spur creation of native applications at least on that platform, but personally, the "feature" I was looking for recently when I upgraded my mobile phone was how reliable and faithful were the mobile versions of the Google applicatons, including Gmail and Google Calendar, that I use at home and work everyday. No more syncing; I want the same data wherever I go.