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5apps joins W3C to help shape the Web

Sophia Antipolis (FR)/Amsterdam (NL)/Berlin (DE), May 28th 2013

European startup company 5apps is proud to announce that it is joining the World Wide Web Consortium as a member. Other prominent members of W3C include technology companies like Google, Adobe, Samsung and Microsoft as well as over 370 other organisations like the BBC, Facebook and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Next year in October W3C will celebrate its 20-year anniversary.

"We believe the Web is the future of apps", says Sebastian Kippe, one of the two founders and co-director of 5apps. "And we want to put our money and our effort where our mouth is and support W3C in growing the power of the Web by joining it as an organisational member."

5apps technology revolves around bundling ubiquitous low cost web technologies (the same you find on an average web page), optimise these and turn the result into high quality apps that can be used on a wide variety of different platforms, device classes and environments - from smartphones, tablets and set top boxes to desktop operating systems like Windows 8 and Chrome OS.

"We are thrilled to see innovative startup companies like 5apps enter the market with new ideas, new requirements and a lot of fresh energy", says Bernard Gidon, EMEA Business Development Leader at the World Wide Web Consortium. "They are the type of company that doesn't mind tilting the industry and finding new and important ways of making the Web grow beyond what it is today. W3C is very happy to welcome this energy as part of the Web's development."

While most companies in the HTML5 app industry still focus on the past and present situation, compiling native apps from web technologies and distributing them via the very few big app stores (as long as they're not rejected of course), 5apps is launching its family of products right into the transition that is currently happening.

"By the day more and more software can be built and distributed using the Web platform alone", says Garret Alfert, a long time web developer and the other founder of 5apps, "and the ocean of mature technology that comes with that saves a lot of headache for app developers. It means for instance they don't even need to think about developing and maintaining backend software and infrastructure anymore." 5apps promises a vastly more efficient and streamlined process fully controlled by the developer, resulting in better and more agile apps delivered to different markets faster.

"There is a lot of exciting new stuff emerging in W3C, and there are a number of important challenges for the industry as well," says Kippe. "Our people have been actively contributing to Web standardisation as community members like many others, but the time has come to take it one step further and take responsibility. Our W3C membership will allow us to fully engage with the other members of the international Web standards community and bring the Web forward." Kippe is expected to join W3C's Advisory Council.