What the report is based on: a median value selected from the traffic to 42 of the top US websites (it ignores those which don't have both and app and a website) from data provided by Comscore.<p>The term "traffic" is never defined. Web requests? Quantity of data transferred? Both of those would have significantly shapes depending on whether the client was a browser or an app.<p>It's also interesting to note that the top 10 "Browser Reach Advantage" websites are basically text based websites - news sites, wikipedia and blogs.<p>Things I learned from the report: the top website (with 207.0x Browser Reach Advantage) Blogger has an app.
The difference between web and app is trust.<p>A website has write access to my screen, my speakers and my internet connection. Plus limited read access. To keyboard, mouse, device orientation etc. Other rights can be granted (location, cookies etc). It can do all this only as long as it's "open".<p>An app usually has read/write access to large parts of my device. The whole sd-card, raw internet access, the camera, the microphone, ask me for money etc. And it can keep doing so even when it's "closed".<p>We will see the two converge. Websites will have more rights they can ask for. Apps will be better to tame.<p>But trust will keep being the differentiator and they will keep co-existing. There is friendship and there is marriage. Both have their use case.
For years it has been obvious that the web would beat apps in aggregate, but apps would have better engagement. If you wrap your website in an app using ionic and treat it like a standard site no one will use it. While soneon has noted trust (which is true) it is also fir convenience. The browser is a great app and can run many apps in parralel while quickly shifting between them, it is CONVENIENCE as mych as trust.<p>If your app does mot extensively make use of the hardware and can be run as a website, it has no business being an app. This is obvious, being proved now, and the app craze will pivot from shit-tier websites in iOS clothing to things that add real value and interface directly with the phones hardware because they need to provide security, access to a protocol, or leverage hatdware (accelerometer, camera, Bluetooth, etc)
I believe that mobile browser will beat apps, like it did on desktop. Mobile browsers were unusable, sites were not mobile-friendly, devices were slow with tiny screens. Now those factors change and browsing websites on modern smartphone is much more usable. And it's likely that we will see shift from mobile apps to mobile websites in the near future.
> The problem is terminology and the exact focus of each study. Morgan Stanley’s study [browser > app] is focused on unique visitors — calling it, somewhat misleadingly, “traffic” — while comScore’s report [app > browser] is focused on actual user time spent.<p>Explains the surprising result.
Apps use less data than mobile web sites - API's over full HTML/CSS/JS stacks. When a web page on a modern news site can be ~20MB, this news is no surprise.
Most popular used apps/platforms nowadays are not related to hardware (Facebook, Twitter, Medium). Chances are, your product isn’t too.<p>The only thing annoying me in mobile browser experience is the UI. For example, Safari on iOS. Let’s hide URL bar and get rid of back/forwards buttons in favour of using gestures 100%. Then, most of websites will be perceived as apps for majority of users anyway.<p>By moving to native we officially obey corporations to control our products and it’s surely not the way to go.
It's a ridiculous to call the metric measured by this study "Traffic". All it's counting is "unique user's as counted" on all the websites.<p>So while I'm scrolling through twitter app on my phone, I might click on about 20-30 random links (most of which open in the browser), take a quick look and swipe away the tab. According to this study, I just presented myself as "Unique User" on 20-30 sites. All the while, I'm simply browsing twitter.<p>So according the methodology of this study, I just generated 30x the "web traffic" as compared to my app traffic. It's a patently ridiculous way of measuring mobile usage.
Uhm. I would say it's more notable that 1/3 of mobile traffic is seemingly under the control of a few companies. If you were ever concerned about the openess of the Internet, this is it.
I'm pretty suspicious of the data and the analysis in this study - even though I "like" some of the conclusions. I wrote a post about it here:
<a href="https://www.distilled.net/resources/5-things-that-make-me-suspicious-of-morgan-stanleys-report-on-apps-vs-mobile-web/" rel="nofollow">https://www.distilled.net/resources/5-things-that-make-me-su...</a><p>Hope someone finds it useful.
No, it's not "growing faster". Numbers from the article:<p><pre><code> 2013: 1.8x
2014: 1.7x
2015: 2.1x
</code></pre>
Get two up years in a row, and maybe there's a trend. You could get that much increase from increased bloat on a few key sites' home pages.
One of my pet peeves are the sites like LinkedIn and scribd that push you hard to install a c-rap. If at all possible I prefer to browse desktop sites on my tablet father than mobile sites that assume I have sold my firstborn son to Verizon in exchange for the right to breath through a straw in places where Verizon feels like providing service.
Fastest growing, yeah...
<a href="https://xkcd.com/1102/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1102/</a><p>And also Traffic says nothing about usage.
I mean a Browser needs to download more things than any App will do, thats why Apps are used so heavily.
the only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself
I find is to so much easier to just type out the URL of what app I need - facebook, reddit, youtube, etc -<p>Its just faster to let google auto-complete then having to browse my own phone for the app that I need.<p>typing the letter "f" is faster than exiting the browser and using my OWN EYES to browse left to right row by row the apps on my phone. How cave-manish.