Recently my 9-year old daughter asked to borrow my iPhone during a three-minute car ride.  Since Digital Chocolate has great iPhone games and our slogan is, “Seize the Minute!” I could hardly refuse.  When we pulled up to the house I asked to have my phone back, but she said, “Wait, I have to finish sending this email.”  I didn’t even know she knew what a browser was and there she was using my device to send her emails.

The explosive growth of the World Wide Web and mobile phones over the last two decades is too big to be ignored.  More and more people across generations are becoming more fluent quicker and quicker on these new devices and platforms.

Remember when we used to physically shop in actual stores, watch analog television and phones were attached to the wall by a cord?  There was a time when phone booths were so ubiquitous famous storylines like Superman and Get Smart were built around them.

Well, welcome to the present. TV signals no longer exist. Phone booths are long gone (except in Britain where they are nothing more than red boxes American tourists photograph).  And how’s in-store retail doing?  Not so good. Luckily, there’s a whole new digital arena – often on a wireless network – that’s accessible with gadgets that fit in our pockets or can be used in bed. And we feel pretty super and smart about being there.

What has happened is a classic case of product disruption.  Video games once served an audience of 100 million hardcore gamers but in recent years we have seen a cool billion consumers emerge to engage in new digital behaviors including browsing, texting, email, photo-sharing, YouTube videos and casual games.  Consistent with disruptive theory, consumers came because of a new benefit:  social contact.  But with today’s technology, they are consuming more than ever before for the simple reason that these platforms are simple and convenient.

The early adopters used to know and care about their PC operating systems.  They would buy and install applications and keep their folders organized.  Then they migrated to downloading and installing over the Web, but it turned out that was another “hardcore” behavior and not something the general public easily adopted.

When YouTube was born, numerous video services on the Web already existed, but they required users to download and install a video player they would have to be able to find on their computers later.

YouTube simplified the online video world by keeping everything in the browser and not requiring anyone to install or remember anything. Everything users needed was already online waiting for them. When they emailed a video clip, their friend only had to click on it to play and bookmarks made it a snap to use the service again and again.

Simple: check. Convenient: check. Viral: check.  Cha-ching: check and check.

This simplicity, convenience and “virality” was achieved because the mass market (such as YouTube) adopted the browser as their fundamental organizing principle for computing.  Today, most consumers on a PC do almost everything through their browser.

The browser is the first computing paradigm that will truly reach all of humanity and it wins because it is simpler, more convenient and more viral than other options.

Since entire browsers have been hard to cram onto tiny mobile phone screens, we’ve seen another model emerge: apps.  DoCoMo invented the app store concept and launched it with iMode in 1999.  They have since built an enormous mobile network market in Japan where virtually everyone uses their mobile phone as their computer, 90% of customers are on a 3G network and more email is sent by mobile devices than by PCs.

In Japan, the public is spending as much on mobile data services as they spend on voice. In contrast, just a few years ago mobile voice revenue in the West was 50 times larger than mobile data revenue.

More recently, however, we have seen the meteoric growth of disruptors like Apple and Facebook.  While Facebook certainly leveraged the browser wisely, both companies also followed DoCoMo by offering an API for apps and organizing apps into an online retail store with centralized payment methods.

Now, Google is trying to do the same thing with Android, as are others, and Microsoft has an online walled garden with Xbox LIVE.  Sony and Nintendo are also following suit.

This strategy, however, is flawed if it Balkanizes platforms and customers. Fragmentation amongst platforms is not the path we want to take. Roads and analog phones began the same way but eventually the operators realized that they needed to be “interoperable” as social services, not separate entities.

The same thing then happened with SMS, MMS and email.  All were “walled gardens” until it became obvious that more customers would be happy and the market would be vastly larger if different devices and platforms could communicate with each other through the network cloud and if it could all be simpler for the public to use. Imagine if everyone had to have the same email provider in order to communicate via email. It would be a disaster!

Today a battle is brewing that pits the open Web against the app stores.  For social games, it is clear that the browser-based web approach should win.  Consumers will insist on the simplicity and convenience of the browser and they will also prefer the SaaS model, “Software as a Service”.

Instead of downloading and installing applications, they will just want the Internet cloud to take care of business.  They’ll want to launch their browser, click on their bookmarks and have it all just work.  They already have this expectation about voice, SMS, MMS, email, search and other types of browsing, so why not the Web too?

For any kind of social media, the public will want to be able to easily communicate with family members and friends on other networks and devices and once a customer has adopted a service they will expect to have access to it from all of their devices, platforms and networks.  This will include “roaming” onto devices and networks they don’t own like hotel and airline set-top boxes, free WiFi hotspots , or even someone else’s device.

Companies that are proprietary platforms requiring native development argue the result is higher quality apps and better customer experiences.  Judging from all the garbage you find in many of these app stores, the argument is obviously flawed and not necessarily in the public’s best interest.

Insisting on native development means higher costs for developers leading to higher prices for customers. Furthermore, it makes it harder for developers to create technology that can span across an increasing plethora of devices.

Imagine, for example, if recorded music required instruments only made by one company.  And if the music could not be played on TV without being a new live recording.  And if a film could not be shown on TV without going back on location and reshooting the entire film with somebody’s proprietary projector that is supposedly, “better”.

The way to better quality is to have an enormous market using the SaaS model that embraces open standards.  Developers can then focus on making the best quality programs instead of spending time creating several versions for several platforms and the public can vote with their time and money.  Let’s not forget that this is how the World Wide Web was built in the first place and it is under this model that numerous innovations like Google and Facebook have emerged. In addition, the Web also created a huge new market for digital distribution of established media like film, television, news and music.

The network cloud now includes the four fundamental screens of the PC, TV, tablet and mobile phone.  The first three types of screen are big enough to become browser-based.  The real question comes when taking into account smaller mobile screens.

Ironically, desktop icons were the PC’s “app store” before the browser was invented, and were as obviously superior to MS-DOS as the iPhone is when compared to a Java phone.

But for mass-market consumers, the browser is going to plow the desktop under.  And as mobile screens get bigger and mobile browsers get better, the browser will win the fourth screen as well.  A browser win is a win for SaaS, a win for developers and a win for the public.  You can bet that social games will need more SaaS and that they will get it.