Research firm Strategy Analytics said that sales of HTML5 handsets will increase to 1 billion units in 2013 from 336 million in 2011, driven by “robust demand” from multiple hardware and software developers in North America, Europe and Asia who want to deliver cross-platform rich media services.

According to Neil Mawston, executive director of the company: “HTML5 has quickly become a high-growth technology that will help smartphones, feature phones, tablets, notebooks, desktop PCs, televisions and vehicles to converge in the future. HTML5 will be a pivotal technology in the growth of a multi-screen, 4G LTE cloud that is emerging for mobile operators, device makers, car manufacturers, component vendors and web app developers.”

However, the company also noted that despite its growing success, HTML5 is still a “relatively immature technology.” It said that it has limited APIs and feature sets compared with native development for platforms such as iOS or Android, and “will require several years of further development and standards-setting before HTML5 can fully mature to reach its potential as a unified, multi-platform content-enabler.”

With Adobe’s recent decision to end development of Flash as a mobile web technology, HTML5 now presents the most obvious path for developers looking to write apps and content which can be delivered across device types and platforms.