We have a perfect solution for the kind of publishing model which Brett is referring to, which operates in sharing and replication rather than central repositories which are historically prone to snuffing out. Just use Bittorrent.

Bittorrent was embraced for pirating music and movies, but it has major benefits if adopted as a back-end protocol for distribution of content on mobile devices. Bandwidth isn't an issue as long as everything is done on WiFi when plugged in, then it's just like a laptop. You are obviously looking at poorer seed ratios than the desktop-centric distribution we are used to, but it will be relatively cheaper for content distributors to support some of the seeding with their data centers than to absorb the entire responsibility. Granted, this is way less efficient than just doing central distribution from a data center, but you gain in resilience, and since you aren't depending on this for the navigation and basic UI, the user experience isn't dependent on real time network transfers which still are very from being dependable. This model might not work for everyone, but I think it is the ideal model for sharing data sets, academic papers, DRM videos and music (though I'd prefer non-DRM), public digital arts projects, and rich interactive news stories (with a collection of video, models, etc). The Web was great when bandwidth was expensive, but today it is cheap and unevenly distributed, and it is time for a new model.

Apps can serve as trackers which curate links (bonus points if Android / iOS bake the protocol into the OS so that your device can keep track of torrents without that information being locked into your app (can probably get some efficiencies in managing sharing if those settings are centralized in the OS). I also wonder if seed ratios can be shared between different distributors and bought and sold from data centers. It seems only fair. It does go against net neutrality though, as I can imagine a situation where people are given less bandwidth because they don't have a seed ratio of 100 or something (i.e., 100 GB of upload for every 1 GB of download). Nonetheless, this may be a fairly healthy way of having people with better means subsidize the content to those less fortunate. You can even run all monetization of this scheme by having the distribution networks downloading it to themselves, jacking up the seed ratios that are possible.

Someone else here mentioned the need for an app ecosystem that treats apps as adversarial. I think that is exactly what we have seen with Android and iOS. Want to use my camera? You need permission. Granted, there are some social engineering issues with people not really considering the rights they give up when they tap on the Install button,even when it is spelled out in simple language (I can say this because I know I don't care as much as I should, so it's not coming from a lack of technical knowledge). I think it's a short matter of time before Android becomes a serious competitor to Windows. iOS is more tricky as it would cannibalize the Mac ecosystem which is heavily built up. Things that would signal things moving in that direction are for example, Adobe releasing a complete version of photoshop on one of these mobile first OS. Also, Microsoft releasing their tools on Android (unless they keep that as a competitive advantage of the windows os, which is likely).

In either case, I think the death of the Web is near on mobile. The benefits include more safety, more functionality, a collection of trusted brands (unfortunately, innovation WILL be hampered by this move. People will accept toy apps that don't take permissions, but otherwise people will have a really hard time competing in the Web ghetto)