By Wayne Thorsen (@waytho), Vice President, Global Partnerships, Telefónica Digital

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of participating in a keynote panel at AppsWorld North America in San Francisco. The panel was themed “Is HTML5 the Future?” and was part of the HTML track at the conference. Both the fact that there was a whole track on HTML5 and that the room was packed and standing room only says to me that developers have a keen interest in this approach and that there is a thirst to get educated and moving on applications rendered in HTML5.

I was joined on the panel by a diverse and interesting set of peers. Paul McManus is Head of Mobile at Betway, a leading online gambling company. Nicollo De Masi is CEO and President of Glu Mobile which has enjoyed success in the gaming space. Steve Pinches, Group Product Manager, Emerging Technologies, Financial Times brought both a British accent and an interesting online/offline perspective to the panel. Derek Allard flew in from Massachusetts, where he is the mobile editor at Smashing Magazine, to moderate the panel.

Reflecting on the panel, here were some of the key takeaways for me:

Many developers are really rooting for HTML5

Across both the developers with whom I shared the panel and the audience, most phrases were punctuated with “we are very pro HTML5” or similar words. Why all this interest? These developers are finding the openness welcoming and the chance to experiment with new advertising models exciting.

The fact that you can “live outside the app store” means you get to see new experiences coming through, which is definitely a positive. As I like to say, these new experiences will come from working across so many things. It creates an environment where a million flowers can bloom – not just those which the farmer plants.

However, the winner will be determined by the user – and until apps ‘talk’ to each other, we won’t see traction

While there is all this energy around the concept, and even considerable hype, my fellow panellists (all of whose applications run across multiple platforms), were quick to point out that the winner will be determined by user behaviour and where the user finds the most value.

They added they will be cautious about investing a lot of resources ahead of the curve. Distribution and user acquisition dictate where they spend their resources long term. Other key factors are available hardware and screen size. All those “screens” need to interact with each other and the more that can, the better. Steve likened it to the payments problem. Until you get critical mass by having apps talk to each other and work widely, you don’t get traction. The promise of the open web device is exciting since it opens up massive new markets that have been totally under-served until now.

Gardens may get pruned, but the prettiest flowers will always be well tended

There was a lot of interesting debate over the long-term effect of the growth of HTML5 applications and approaches on the app stores. Some fear that the growing abundance of applications, especially across so many platforms, will necessitate pruning while others think the app stores will go the way of web-based content, getting ever bigger at geometric growth rates.

The general sentiment was that competition is good: it provides alternatives, puts downward pressure on the app store owners and therefore on the share that they take. This downward pressure can help spur further innovation. The best applications will always be in demand, both by the app store owners and users. Where the riskier business happens is for a sole developer who works long and hard on an application. If it ends up getting rejected, that can be a fatal blow. Whether many such developers take a risk to play in someone’s garden or operate outside of terms and conditions has yet to be seen, and the verdict likely won’t appear for years to come.

While none of us had a perfect crystal ball to see just what the garden of the future looks like, I personally, along with my colleagues were inspired by the level of discussion and confident that we’re in for a wild ride as the app wars continue to heat up.