The next generation of mobile web applications will be driven by Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), according to Nick Jones, vice president of Gartner: “It’s taken 10 years of experimentation on the static web to come up with sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube…Those were 10 years during which the barriers for entry were very low – enabling anyone with a server to provide services. It has been much harder in the mobile world, because the operators want to remain in the value chain, controlling what goes out through their ports” reports Computing. Google and Microsoft are more interested in building platforms for other people to put applications on, which will apparently “help to fuel the innovation the industry has lacked so far”.

I’m pretty sure the mobile industry does not lack for innovation—there’s an incredible amount of new and imaginative services and applications coming out every week. The issue is making those services and applications available to the general public and informing the public of their existence ... and sometimes public apathy in the face of some new whizz-bang service that doesn’t really interest them at all. Anyway, it’s the access problem that Google and Microsoft might fix—not necessarily increasing innovation but making it easier for entrepreneurs to disseminate their innovations.