Sencha targets the enterprise market and is very excited to be a partner of SAP. Sencha is doing a lot of things right. They already have over 1 million downloads of their HTML5 tools, and have 350,000 members in their forum.
I believe SAP is very smart with these partnerships. There is no way that SAP can keep up with the demand for mobile applications, so they partner with HTML5 tool vendors and ask the industry to standardize on their mobile platforms. The end users can now choose their own development environment as long as it supports SAP's mobility platform. The burden for supporting the demands of developers will then mostly fall on the shoulders of these HTML5 tool and framework vendors.
At the same time as SAP announced the partnerships with HTML5 vendors, they also announced the acquisition of Syclo. Syclo has many great mobile application development tools, but does not currently have HTML5 support, so these partnerships will also serve to provide an alternative development environment for companies wanting to standardize on HTML5 when possible.
SAP also has a partnership with ClickSoftware which has an HTML5 development environment in their ClickMobile Professional solution.
I asked Sencha's CEO Michael Mullany for his prediction on what percentage of enterprise mobility apps will be based on HTML5 by 2014. He answered, "50% will be HTML5, 20% native and 30% will be hybrid HTML5 apps. I read that as 80% of enterprise mobility applications will be using some form of HTML5 by 2014. Wow!
For integrations with SAP, Sencha is connecting via NetWeaver Gateway.
*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.