As a new breed of of internet enabled devices emerge, 15 year old web-based standards are quickly breaking down. Proprietary platforms are being developed to explicitly exclude technologies from other vendors (i.e. Google and Apple). If this trend continues, the internet experience could dramatically change and we may lose many of the cross platform capabilities of a common web browser. Mobile platforms like the iPhone, Android and Blackberry all have unique development requirements. There are also eReader devices like the Kindle and the Nook that also require content in there own specific format.
These cross platform development issues will ultimately cause a what Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research calls "a splintering of the the internet". He was interviewed on Marketplace by Kai Rysdall and made the point that content developers may need to return back to square one, and start making decisions on which devices they can or will support. Whole markets may be excluded from certain content formats or applications based on the devices people use. Unless device standards emerge soon we may find ourselves in a tangled web of content and applications.
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