The iPhone admittedly is a pretty cool device.  And of course we are eagerly awaiting the first Android devices to roll out, not to mention the Blackberry Bold.

The interesting thing about all of these new devices, is that each step forward in a sense is a step back - at least for the developers and publishers among us.  More devices and more platforms to support means that building apps to run on everyone’s phone isn’t an easy task.  Sure, a publisher can pick a specific device and build a big hit, but how many of these hits have been successes on many devices.  Google Maps is one of the few examples.

We keep hearing the same thing in the mobile industry, that we’ll know it is finally getting interesting when someone can come up with a great idea for an app, build it, and see it become an ‘overnight’ success in large numbers.  And while it is tough enough to build a killer app overnight, even if someone did, there is a huge challenge getting it to run on enough phones quickly enough to really drive some interesting adoption numbers.  Even a huge hit on the iPhone is only looking at a market of 10 million phones by the end of 2008.  Now that is a pretty impressive number, but what about the other 2+ billion phones out there?

Interestingly enough, most of the proposed solutions to this fragmentation problem just add to it at the end of the day.  Look at any company offering ‘widgets’ or mobile application containers that get installed on a phone, and then run a script which defines the app.  Yet another language to learn, even if it is simple enough.

A better way (in our humble opinion) is to take something that has been around for years on the web, HTML, JavaScript and CSS, and use that to create mobile apps.  Don’t force people to learn something new. Make it easy.

It’s what we’ve tried to do with Breeze.