‘One app for all' effort launches

A European project to develop an application environment for every internet-connected device has received 10m euros in funding, reports BBC News.

The project aims to sidestep operating systems and proprietary app stores by providing a web-based approach.

The idea would enable a given app to work, for example, on a web-ready television, in a car and on a mobile, no matter the makers of the devices.

However, industry insiders say the idea is unlikely to get off the ground.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (Fokus) in Germany is leading the effort, dubbed Webinos.

It is a group of 22 organisations including mobile operators Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia, manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson and Samsung, and standards body the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

"The problem is the extreme platform fragmentation," said project lead Stephan Steglich.

"We have a lot of different platforms that apps run on – the iPhone, Android, Symbian – and that's only on the mobile side. If you extend that to include the automotive part and consumer electronic area you have more platforms," Dr Steglich told BBC News.

"Companies can afford to have an app on two or at most three platforms – they're extremely costly to develop and ensure the user experience.

"That's what we want to address – to provide a system that runs on all these platforms and domains, where the developer comes up with one application for one platform and lets you run it on all these devices – mobiles, automotive, gaming, and so on."