

Ask HN: Where will mobile web apps be in 2-3 years? - kelleolsen

Today we have seen the announcement of Zend Studio 10 that lets PHP developers build iOS and Android apps. We also see platforms like PhoneGap.<p>In 2011 Techcrunch published that Facebook has more than twice as many visitors in their HTML5 app than on their native apps. I actually don't know how it is now!<p>But my question for you is, where will mobile web apps be in 2-3 years?<p>- Will it beat native apps?
- Will native apps in the future be build with web languages?
- How will we access mobile web apps in the future? Download through App Store and Play etc. or from the mobile browser?<p>The discussion with mobile web apps and native apps will never end, before we have the result. But what do you think?
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MatthewPhillips
Tooling is not the problem, the problem is the browsers themselves. On the
desktop browsers are updated very frequently, on mobile up until very
frequently once-a-year updates were the norm. That's changing on the Android
side. So far Chrome for Android hasn't shown to be disruption it was on the
desktop, and I'm not sure Google is giving the team the same level of
importance as they are on desktop (and Chrome OS).

Firefox has the best chance of being the disruptor, and they seem committed,
but it's much harder to do it as a 3rd party browser on mobile for a couple of
reasons 1) There is not, yet, consumer demand for 3rd party browsers. The
default is accepted as the gateway to the web. 2) It's much harder to make a
competitive 3rd party browser due to the APIs that are available. Firefox OS
is a better experience than Firefox for Android for this reason.

The wildcard is still Chrome, in my opinion. It seems to me, as a 3rd party
observer, that Chrome for Android is still a side-project for the Chrome team
who are more focused on their own OS (can't blame them there) and their own
app store. If Chrome, which is updated more frequently Android Browser ever
did, starts to gain momentum it could be the push that is needed to bring
mobile browsers to a place where they are an acceptable "native platform".
Chrome still doesn't have a version of "home screen apps" like Mobile Safari
has had forever and Firefox for Android now has, so it remains to be seen if
that is even a goal of Chrome for Android.

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hiddenstage
I think native apps will continue to have significant advantages over the time
frame you mentioned. The biggest reason is the following:

Steps to open the Facebook web app- 1) Click on browser 2) Type in
Facebook.com 3) Sign in

Steps to open the Facebook native app- 1) Click on Facebook

HTML5 (and other web languages, but mostly HTML5) apps may be more prevalent
in the future than they are now due to cross-compatibility advantages, but it
is still difficult to use phone functionality in comparison to native code.

~~~
bmelton
Your second scenario relies upon credential caching, or "saved logins", and is
just as doable for an HTML5 app as it is for a client app.

Facebook still has credentials (vs. some apps that are tied to just the phone
number or native Google account tied to the phone) and as such, still requires
a login for that initial run, just as an HTML5 app does.

In that regard, it's possible that the non-Facebook app has an advantage in
that they can use Google oAuth to authenticate the user which, on an Android
phone, already contains an active session, so their login method can be even
leaner than the Facebook app (until and unless Facebook changes something, or
releases their own hardware).

~~~
hiddenstage
I realize that but I for one clear my cookies/cache pretty regularly in my
browsers while I hardly ever do so for my native apps. I may not be the
majority, but my point remains that there is still a higher barrier to entry
for browser-based apps.

~~~
bmelton
Perhaps it was just a bad example, but your minority use case rivals my own,
which is that I do not save credentials on my Facebook app.

Again though, if app_x implements login-less transactions, perhaps using phone
number or phone SSID, or Google oAuth, then they're ahead of the Facebook app,
login-wise.

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sdi
I think Native apps will continue to dominate the market. Surely the power of
HTML5 apps will come into play but performencewise native apps will overshadow
them.

