Forbes, as usual, churning out horrendously written and poorly thought through articles.<p>Time spent is a poor way for anyone to evaluate a market or even a single product. It could mean anything from "wow this product is amazing, let me stay on it all day" to "wow this product sucks, and I can't find anything but I need to so I'm going to spend 3 hours on it finding what I need".<p>Its an even worse choice to then extrapolate that metric into high level prognostications about what does/doesn't matter in the space.<p>Mobile Web has a role for consumers and companies. Mobile apps, like packaged software of the past, also have a role for consumers and companies. The value is in understanding why they have different use cases and building software that delivers value to users for what they need right now.<p>But hey, if this poorly written article resonates with you, feel free to listen. And the rest of us will laugh at you all the way to the bank.
Apps are great right now because they are better than most of the web apps.<p>However, they aren't the future, because:<p>- Web apps are always up-to-date, no updating necessary<p>- Web apps are stored in the cloud, not on your device<p>- Web apps work on any device/platform, apps need to be written for each<p>- Web apps are there on demand, instantly, while vendors cannot expect you to download an app for every website, company and product.<p>Look at what Google is doing with the Chromebook and look at devices like the Synology where the best feature is the Web app interface served from the device itself. This is the future, the "Internet of Things".
Awesome, now even more sites will try and force me to download their shitty app when all I want is to read a fucking article! No wonder no one uses the mobile web when every other site does stuff like that.
So Facebook, Messaging, and Gaming apps make up 58% of mobile usage statistics and suddenly the mobile browser is "dead"? Mobile browsers have never been a strong target for gaming and won't be until Apple allows WebGL to run in Mobile Safari. What I take from this is that Facebook still dominates people's online activities and that most people spend most of their time playing Candy Crush Saga on their phones. This article is link-bait, nothing more.
I feel the same. As a developer I'd like to just develop HTML5 Apps and be done with it. But as a user I always, ALWAYS, prefer an App over the website, even if both do the same thing. I don't know why but HTML5 Apps don't feel as easy, responsive, fast and integrated as the average Android App. I always feel a little tighten up when being in the browser, even the App is designed exactly for my screen size. Therefore I also decided that if I develop something for the phone it must be a native App.
thing is that mobile web has not yet integrated into mobile platform per-se. Apps have access to far more features of the OS than web pages. I think if browsers would be able to expose and integrate web-apps something that can be a blend of an app and webservice then one will see how limited and stupid using isolated app is.<p>Open services promote integration and availability of things you want to do.. for example I can't instapaper an article in my safari browser, I am sure I could've fixed that if there'd been a layer of script language between OS apps and web apps. It is only a sliver but it has been annoying me quite a bit. If the mobile ecosystem will be scriptable and integratable then one can make web be a first class citizen on the mobile. For now browser is a pretty crummy way to do web on a mobile device. Screen is too small, value added features are only available to apps only. Maybe for a good reason - technological one, battery and security(those are the problems to solve). Yet I would like to program my alarm clock from the web and have it send me some news for the time when I got up ... something like that (I am brain storming here)<p>2c
Ah, these articles really make me feel uneasy.<p>I prefer this mindset instead:<p><a href="http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/" rel="nofollow">http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/</a>
I disagree; web apps are just warming up. Native apps are still the go-to for a seamless experience, but I think that will change. As devices develop greater fragmentation continues (now seeping into the iOS echo system by the looks of it) apps will need to get better at being responsive. Web apps have already figured out a lot of the challenges surrounding responsive design, and will continue to do so. Once devices become powerful enough that there's no significant difference between web and mobile things will change dramatically. I see Google being the next to adopt native HTML5 and JS (after Microsoft's lesser known adoption in Windows Phone and Windows 8). Google's support for native web apps will put pressure on Apple and they'll go the same way.
That graph shows 68% of the time in games, facebook, chat, and music/video.<p>The remaining 32% is split between 14% in the browser and 18% in apps. That's not the same thing as the mobile browser being dead.
I think the author didn't exactly understand what Marc Dillon meant by saying:<p><i>> but I understand the utility of having applications. But they contribute to a tunnel vision of what a smartphone can do. They provide a good user experience, but poor integration. A smartphone is smart if it helps users day to day</i><p>He didn't mean it to contrast native applications vs browser based ones. He meant it to contrast standalone / non integrated native applications vs integrated experience where the user doesn't see it as "working with application A", but sees it as "doing task A". Native vs Web wise, Jolla's Sailfish is actually heavy on the native side.<p><i>> The methodology of Android and iOS is the dominant viewpoint.</i><p>It's a not a reason to copycat it and to be a follower rather than a disruptor. Sailfish and FirefoxOS don't follow a lot of aspects of the established iOS and Android approaches and it's a good, not a bad thing.
My opinion is there has been a failure of IT to realize that mobile is completely different from everything else and we continue to leverage desktop technology in the mobile world.<p>Apps work best because they do not carry baggage of the desktop world with them. People have the freedom to build specifically for mobile with mobile tools.<p>There are no two bigger movements that contribute to this than: Responsive Design and the Mobile first.<p>Responsive Design implies that mobile is just different from desktop based on the display size and that you can design a single interface that can work for both. Both of these ideas are completely wrong.<p>Mobile First implies designing for mobile and then desktop is the best approach but this can never work as both platforms will suffer from inferior implementations.<p>----<p>Setting the ship back on course would take us building "Mobile Only" with mobile only frameworks, by dropping the ones that were created in the desktop era.
The more damning thing is the web is rapidly becoming poor people and geekland, with apps becoming where the middle and upper classes are consuming, so the value is moving heavily towards appland.<p>It's been clear for a while that monetising apps is easier than the web, though the discovery problem is intense.<p>What I've not seen, and would be interesting, is how different this is for iOS and Android users. i.e. do iOS users spend more time on apps vs in browser than Android users?
I love these article titles especially since I love getting my tech news from forbes the way I love my mechanic's baked goods. Apps have their place and the browser is not going away. If anything "The browser is dead...long live the mobile OS". I would cite reasons why I think this but I'll claim the same opinion piece rights media seems to enjoy lately.
Why can’t the “future” be one with both web apps and native apps? (e.g. like how it is now)<p>They both have their up-sides and down-sides, but which is best usually depends on the context in which they are being used, and if nothing else, user preference.<p>I don’t see why one has to “win” per-say … it seems to me like the future is big enough for both to thrive :)
One of the biggest reasons that native apps are getting more usage than mobile web apps is the existence of an app store. There is no central distribution center for web apps making discovery difficult. The process of getting a mobile web app pinned is not easy enough compared to a native app.
The reason: web pages suck, and they increasingly suck worse and worse with more and more javascript and crap getting thrown in. I wish the simplification required to make a web app that is usable on mobile would find its way back into the web pages themselves.<p>mobile versions of websites are pretty much a joke. I can't stand what amazon does when I try to visit with opera (forces it to mobile). Makes it pretty unusable.