Wired magazine thinks so...
Apps are helping to speed the 'decline' of the World Wide Web, according to a new editorial in Wired Magazine.
Written by Chris Anderson - of Long Tail and Freeconomics fame - the piece suggests that:
"Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display."
Anderson thinks this model is driven by Apple's App Store model: "semiclosd platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display".
The article also refers to statistics showing that HTML traffic now makes up less than a quarter of total traffic on the Internet, squeezed by P2P, email, VoIP, games, iTunes, videochatting and movie streaming.
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This isn't the first time Wired has declared the death of the browser: it famously did so back in 1997 - something hailed by Anderson in his piece as "prescient". An alternative description might be "wrong", mind.
Proclaiming the death of anything is a risky affair, often based more on a desire for a snappy headline than on a genuine belief.
iPhone and Android are certainly stimulating app usage, but they're also boosting mobile web usage through their browsers - and that's before HTML5 really gets into gear.
