Earlier this year, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced a developer preview of a toolchain that would allow developers to wrap a Chrome app (which had traditionally been limited to the desktop) within a native app shell. More recently, at its I/O conference in San Francisco, Google showed off how its investment in mobile Chrome apps was progressing. There, Google engineers suggested the company was creating an approach that could make hybrid apps--apps that combine elements of Web apps and native apps--more viable than developers tend to believe.
Such actions could help bridge the gap between Google's Chrome and Android platforms, but could also help pave the way for developers to build HTML5 apps that work across multiple platforms, from iOS to Chrome laptops.
"There is no technical difference between a Cordovda PhoneGap application and a Chrome mobile app," Monaca CEO Masahiro Tanaka told FierceDeveloper. "This is really about increasing the point of sale [for an app] using Chrome to market it to other app stores."
In this new FierceDeveloper feature, Editor Shane Schick takes a look at the technologies Google is developing for Chrome mobile apps and explains what those technologies mean for the wider developer community. Check out the feature here.