Over at BusinessInsider the Chart of the Day: “Apps More And More Important Than Mobile Web” reveals some interesting statistic. Mobile applications become more important for people compared to the Mobile Web (and I assume that this includes HTML5-based applications).
I think there are several good reasons for that:
- Mobile Apps also work offline, that is, when you are in the underground, when you are traveling fast (i.e. with a shaky data connection), etc. and being online over wireless networks is still expensive. Yes, with HTML5 you can also run applications offline, but this is not that frequently available. And as Facebook moving from a HTML5-based application to a native iOS app showed, the user experience is challenged.
- But working offline also extends to storing the content and context of the application even when not connected to a central server, making it the better / only choice for application with a lot of local data.
- And apps are the ultimate way of personalizing the “menu” structure of your smartphone. While many attempts to enable menu personalization on feature phones have fails, apps finally make it possible to arrange functionality on the home screen of your device according to your personal need.
So I believe we will still see cloud-enabled, multi-device mobile applications continue to grow for some time.
Apps vs. Mobile Web (Chart of the Day)