Web Apps vs. Native Apps: Opinions

Jason Grigsby (@grigs) of CloudFour says:

"After launching the Obama app, we had people coming to us for native apps every day, but we decided we only wanted to do mobile web apps. Philosophically, I don't see any way that web app technology isn't going to be bigger than distributing apps through an app store. As the demographics of users change, you'll find people aren't going to spend their time browsing the app store. They will go to browse the web and they aren't going to install something unless it's heavily promoted. Who's going to do that? Small businesses are going to need mobile apps if they are going to be found at all."

Raven Zachary (@ravenme) of SmallSociety thinks:

"[Users] already browse the web more than anything else, with the possible exception of listening to music. Apps appeal to consumers in a way that the web simple doesn't today. The first step is getting a great mobile browser into the hands of consumers. That cuts out pretty much all Nokia, Windows Mobile and Blackberry consumers right away. That's a huge portion of the market. That's going to take years to rollout, and for those consumers to adapt. Meanwhile, iPhone app market keeps growing."

via @Sascha and the NYTimes. Highlights by me.

Why I blog this: 

Interesting to hear these opinions. While Marshall Kirkpatrick (of RWW) tries to show them as oppositional in the NYT article, both experts actually say the same thing: web apps will be huge on mobiles. The only thing Raven adds is that it'll take time (and quite a bit of that) until web apps will draw level with native apps in terms of user experience. In the meantime: plenty of time for native apps to set the bar very high. Which is good for all of us.

Here's some other opinions that I covered on the same topic:

Nick Smolney on mobile sites vs mobile apps
Fabrizio Capobianco on a world without the browser
Ilja Laurs on app stores vs the mobile web
Vic Gundotra on the future of app stores
Microsoft on web apps vs native apps

Enjoy!