Appropos: mobile sites vs. mobile apps

[...] mobile web is significantly easier to support than a plethora of apps.

Just to make one change for an app (assuming you did it all in-house) requires you to recompile all builds. Then you need to get it recertified and hope your end users all upgrade. If these weren’t in-house, you have to contact the contractor(s) and coordinate this whole process with them.

Alternatively with web, you can fix the issue once, roll it out to all devices at the same and since you do your own quality control, this can all be done much quicker. Not to mention with the web, the user is presented with the latest version every time they visit, so there’s no need to upgrade.

[...]

All it will take is one of the big guys to stop supporting apps, and start pumping some marketing into mobile web and this will begin to gain traction with consumers.

 Nick Smolney on the Crisp Voices Blog via @tamega

Why I blog this:

He mentions seven reasons, why to consider mobile sites: portability, upgradability, scalability, cost effectiveness, cross-linking, SEO, getting better every day. Good list.

However I don't agree with Nick's view that pumping some marketing money into mobile web will suffice. He mentions the problem: monetization (see also my blog post on that here). Developers won't flock to developing mobile web apps as they do now to applications. Even if the average revenue on an app in Apple's app store is just 1.000$, the potential to hit a home run is still bigger than on the mobile web.