
The Decline of the Mobile Web - goronbjorn
http://www.cdixon.org/2014/04/07/the-decline-of-the-mobile-web/
======
ChuckMcM
It seems 'mobile apps' are like Flash was in the 90's, basically a way to take
full control over the UX to achieve some particular goal. Given the
preponderance of such apps it seems as if home screens are due for a make over
that looks more like iPod music libraries than 'desktop.' Basically something
which supports dozens if not hundreds of apps on a device.

~~~
stonogo
The entirety of current web design practice is taking full control over the
UX. Gone are the days when you sent a GET and got an html document back, the
most interactive element of which was a textarea box.

The other reason flash was a pain, incidentally, was because it was easy to
bog down a client computer with overzealous flash stuff... just like the
current tendency to use javascript to do all your rendering and computation
clientside -- exactly when more people than ever before are browsing on pocket
devices with far less horsepower than traditional computing devices.

~~~
briantakita
Rendering on the client side is fast, especially on the newer high end devices
like the S4 & the IPhone5. It will only continue to get faster.

The biggest issues are bandwidth/asset file sizes & using heavy-weight
frameworks. They bog down the UX on mobile devices.

On my current project, I'm using browserify, Backbone, jQuery, & compiled
Handlebars. The same codebase supports rendering on the web server, rendering
on the web client, mobile web, & apps using PhoneGap. Things seem to be
performing well, even on the S2.

Note: there are strange performance issues with the S4 stock browser.

~~~
stonogo
Rendering on the client side is not even possible with the vast majority of
handheld devices in use around the world. The biggest issues are, as they have
always been, the fact that commercial interests have triumphed over any kind
of inclusive standard practice.

Please understand I'm not passing judgment on the matter -- but I would like
to highlight the relatively elite status of people with quad-core telephones.

~~~
briantakita
I understand. But then, those low end phones are using something like Symbian.

I actually do handle the low end phones by rendering a basic html page on the
server. Same codebase :-)

------
habosa
I think Facebook is an instructive example here. They tried for a long time to
make their native app (for Android, anyway) just a wrapper over the mobile web
client, but they could never get the performance all the way there. They went
native and have seen great results. They resisted as long as they could but
eventually the products had to diverge.

I'd say 80% of developers who choose native do so for performance, and 20% do
it because the app store and home screen placement is better for branding and
content discovery than just sticking up your website on a server somewhere.

I think there's room for some sort of hybrid product but I'm not sure what it
would look like. Maybe a mobile browser with super-aggressive caching (like
not even a HEAD request for JS and CSS) and the ability to improve performance
for the foreground page to the point where it's near-native. I'd use that for
the mobile websites that I use less frequently, and continue to download the
native apps for the things I use every day.

~~~
cousin_it
Sure, native apps have better performance on mobile. But the same thing is
true on desktop, yet the web somehow stays popular on desktop. That suggests
that the behavior of platform owners (Apple and Google) is the real reason for
the popularity of apps on mobile, and performance is just a distraction.

~~~
vincentleeuwen
Isn't the whole performance discussion based on synchronizing versus not
synchronizing? There's no reason to synchronize on a Desktop as one can assume
there's wifi available.

~~~
7952
I think that sync vs not syncing tends to be cyclical.

We all started using Gmail because synchronising to a mail server is annoying
and PCs where slow. Ten years later machines have a fast internet connection,
1TB HDD as standard and, maybe an SSD. When you have to wait 10 seconds just
to view an attachment syncing makes a lot of sense. But generating a thumbnail
of that same PDF would be much better handled pre-emptively in the cloud.

The problem is believing that one approach is better for every function of an
app. Few user machines will ever have a guaranteed large amount of bandwidth.
This is just as true on desktop machines as mobile, but less acknowledged.

------
rschmitty
Am I in the minority that I don't want an app for every. bloody. webpage. I
visit?

~~~
georgemcbay
Nope, I don't want that either.

I also don't want every mobile webpage I visit to use some slow janky
JavaScript framework to emulate native app behavior either because in my
experience the user experience for those are universally worse than just
trying to be a relatively normal web page (perhaps with some media queries for
image sizes, etc) and letting the mobile web browser do its thing.

~~~
rainedin
I have limited mobile/smartphone/app experience.

It feels that Desktop apps are sorely neglected. Spotify for example feels
really ancient, a weird UI for such a popular product. I only assume the
mobile versions are more logical and easier to use. I wouldn't want to
immitate the desktop versions. So I read your comment as somethnig like the
immitation of Apple's cover flow. And yes in that way I agree.

Do you think it's the lack of standardisation of menuing/navigation/paging in
web pages/sites that isn't helping matters?

------
jsnk
I wrote about this problem here
([http://serv.github.io/blog/2014/02/20/unfortunate-state-
of-m...](http://serv.github.io/blog/2014/02/20/unfortunate-state-of-mobile-
web/)). Mobile Web sucks because there's an incentive problem. No one really
has strong incentive to make mobile web better. Performance issues are largely
an effect of this root incentive problem. (edited from "cause" to "effect")

\- Users have a strong preconceived notion that websites on mobile just suck
compared to native apps.

\- Management allocates less financial and developer resources into mobile web
because users prefer native app strongly.

\- Developers time and effort are stretched thin for web because management
focus more on native app teams.

The mobile web will continue to lag behind native app for a while.

~~~
milesskorpen
Your assessment seems to suggest this is a perception issue. But even the best
mobile websites really are second-tier to solid (not even top tier) native
apps. And as smartphones become more and more sophisticated sensor platforms,
this will become even more problematic.

~~~
untog
_And as smartphones become more and more sophisticated sensor platforms, this
will become even more problematic._

Not if mobile browsers keep up with these more sophisticated platforms. The
problem (as the OP outlined) is that there are decreasing incentives people
like Apple to keep improving their mobile browser. They hold the keys, and
they want apps.

~~~
fidotron
I agree that this is a significant factor in the problem, but it is far from
the only one.

The problems with the mobile web are far broader than that. Being tied to
JavaScript (a language whose semantics remove significant optimisation
opportunities, unless you write in something else and target via asm.js), a UI
layer that doesn't cleanly map to being hardware accelerated, and missing or
incomplete APIs for everything from Bluetooth to push messaging.

If you look at the Chrome APIs (that is the stuff Chrome apps get access to)
there is neat stuff, and they are attacking it slowly enough that what APIs
they produce are sane, and this is clearly what they see as the future. The
problem is the world moves faster than that, and just as the web people are
beginning to even grok mobile they're going to be smacked around the head by
an absolute explosion of tiny devices.

~~~
untog
_Being tied to JavaScript (a language whose semantics remove significant
optimisation opportunities, unless you write in something else and target via
asm.js)_

In a world where V8 exists, I'm not so sure. JS running on the main thread
absolutely _is_ a problem, and Web Workers are a clunky solution.

 _a UI layer that doesn 't cleanly map to being hardware accelerated_

Agreed this part is tricky. But existing hardware acceleration on mobile web
isn't that bad.

 _missing or incomplete APIs for everything from Bluetooth to push messaging._

Mozilla is working on all this for Firefox OS, but of course no-one has
incentive to agree with them.

~~~
paulirish
> JS running on the main thread absolutely is a problem, and Web Workers are a
> clunky solution.

Chrome is moving towards out-of-process iframes, which should help alleviate
many performance issues (ads janking your page) and give you new capability
(basically web workers with a full DOM).
[http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/oop-
ifra...](http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/oop-iframes)

------
fidotron
I'm of the view this is a lot of fuss about nothing. Big deal if people prefer
apps over the "open" web. The reality is a large number of people use the
likes of MSN and Yahoo as web home pages, and unless you were linked to from
them they were unlikely to find you. The app launcher situation is an
improvement over that.

The big problem is that dipping your toes into something via a website
(assuming you don't hit an auth wall) is easier than finding then downloading
an app.

Besides, a lot of these "web" apps are just things like Facebook or G+ which
are no more open to scraping or any of the other supposed benefits of an open
web than your average iOS or Android mobile clients are. The web has morphed
into an unholy mix of the worst qualities of everything else.

~~~
msvan
It's not a scrapeability problem; it's a freedom problem. The article mentions
this. Why should the app stores decide what can and cannot be on our phones,
and why should they add a 30% tax on everything that is published on mobile?
There are a lot of claims that the tech industry is disrupting the big music
and books businesses, for the benefit of consumers, but these new players are
acting like the middlemen they are replacing.

The web reduces the distance between content consumers and producers, cutting
out the middleman. It's not a perfect solution. Standards are greatly
influenced by commercial interests. But it's better than a locked-down app
store oligopoly.

~~~
josu
>Why should the app stores decide what can and cannot be on our phones

This is not a freedom problem. You have the freedom to buy an Android device,
and you have the freedom to install any apk you want without ever even opening
the Google app store. Moreover, Google even allows 3rd party app stores on
their devices.

And of course these new players are acting as middlemen, but you are
forgetting the fundamental difference, and this is what has changed the game.
Anybody can publish their app, virtually for free. There are no gatekeepers,
who decide what gets published and what doesn't, anymore.

~~~
mikegioia

        There are no gatekeepers, who decide what gets published
        and what doesn't, anymore.
    

Apple routinely rejects applications to their App store. Have you not read any
of the numerous stories where app devs get denied?

    
    
        This is not a freedom problem. You have the freedom to
        buy an Android device, and you have the freedom to install
        any apk you want without ever even opening the Google app 
        store.
    

The freedom to do something like "install any app via .apk" may exist, but it
is still a "freedom problem" when there's a large barrier to installing an
.apk on your device. I'm speculating of course, but real world anecdotes would
lead me to believe that a very small % of the population even knows what an
APK is.

~~~
josu
>Apple routinely rejects applications to their App store. Have you not read
any of the numerous stories where app devs get denied?

Yes, I am aware. And yes, you are right. But the gatekeeping on the app stores
has nothing to do with the music, movie or even book industry. Could they be
more lenient? Yes, but you can't denied that the game has indeed changed.

>I'm speculating of course, but real world anecdotes would lead me to believe
that a very small % of the population even knows what an APK is.

I would say that you are right again. And you are also right, maybe this is a
debate about freedom, but personally, I don't consider having to go to
settings, security and checking a box, a large barrier to freedom. If you
actually seek freedom, it's only a few (acceptable) steps away.

~~~
cortesoft
Sure, you have the freedom to install any apps you want.

However, if I am starting a business, and most people don't know how to
exercise that freedom to install an app from somewhere else, I am not going to
get very far in my business if this is what is required for my end users to
use my program. Therefore, I am not going to invest time in developing
anything that requires that sort of installation, making it practically the
same as not being able to do that at all.

~~~
josu
But you make it sound more like an education problem than a freedom problem.

The issue is not that people are not allowed to install apks, the problem is
that people don't know how to exercise that freedom.

------
cpprototypes
Security could become a big factor in web vs native. For example, I don't
trust the facebook native app. I've used both the web and native versions and
the native version is smoother and better. But I don't trust facebook. There's
a lot of personal information on mobile phones these days and I don't want
facebook accessing that data. For me, using the web version is much safer.

And random apps on the app store from unknown developers? I trust those even
less. I may install one if the list of permissions is very restricted and
reasonable. But I don't like spending time looking at the permissions and
trying to figure out if it's ok.

Another example is banking apps. I remember there was news a while ago that
many banking apps were not handling passwords properly. If I use the web, I
can see the SSL lock icon, inspect the certificate, and know that it's
properly handled. I can't do that for a native app.

~~~
err4nt
Same thing for me - I uninstalled Facebook's app after hearing about how
LinkedIN's new app was grabbing people's contact list without their knowledge.

Fool me once…

------
dodders
The Flurry stats [[http://blog.flurry.com/bid/109749/Apps-Solidify-
Leadership-S...](http://blog.flurry.com/bid/109749/Apps-Solidify-Leadership-
Six-Years-into-the-Mobile-Revolution)] show 32% of user time is spent gaming;
17% on facebook; 9.5% on messaging and 4% on youtube - that's 62% for those of
you keeping count.

That doesn't look like the end of the mobile web - that just looks like people
spending a lot of time gaming and on facebook.

~~~
eli
Indeed, I think it depends a lot on the task.

It's a little dated now, but a Pew study found people overwhelming consume
news from websites versus apps: [http://www.journalism.org/2012/10/01/app-vs-
browser-debate/](http://www.journalism.org/2012/10/01/app-vs-browser-debate/)

I also trust data from Pew considerably more than from Flurry.

------
Ologn
> It is also why so many mobile websites are broken.

Many mobile websites _are_ broken. On a mobile phone, both websites and
"mobile websites" are broken.

If anyone is looking for a money-making idea, here's a website I use all the
time -

[http://maps.huge.info/zip.htm](http://maps.huge.info/zip.htm)

On my desktop it takes me five seconds to use. On my Android HTC One it takes
me maybe five minutes to use.

If someone made an equivalent Android app, or a functional mobile web site of
course I'd use it. Actually - I'm an Android programmer and could do it
myself, but am busy with other things at the moment to do it singlehandedly.

That is just one web site. Many web sites I use are designed for the desktop,
and work horribly on smartphones. No wonder people go running for apps when
the functionality pops up in one.

------
Ingon
While performance is often cited as the main reason for having a native app, I
think that one of the biggest reasons to prefer native apps is usability. More
concretely I can see the following:

\- A web app/site is often an app within an app. This means that what usually
works as an interface to this device is no longer true, or rather different.
The gestures are different, how the app is treating them is different and so
on.

\- On the performance side the web apps suffer from UI delivery problem - the
site must deliver both the app it self and the data for which you use this
app. A native app have to work with the data only, and its not restricted to
be always connected with the web.

\- Another reason is that although the same on the surface mobile is actually
shifting our usage patterns. Our usage is far less consistent, more spaced
out, under more conditions and with smaller screens. The native apps work well
here because their components are thought out to work under these conditions
and of course tested for this.

\- Finally because of the usage patterns we see some native apps more versed
to cover specific use cases. This differs from the mobile web which just have
everything the normal web has, but tested to work on mobile.

Some of this points of course can be tackled by html5 wrapped web apps. But
this approach comes with own set of limitations and problems - we are
compromising on both openness and performance sides. So while I want the
mobile web to work, for now I think that native apps are winning.

~~~
Mikeb85
Your browser can cache a web app to be used offline. Plenty of Chrome apps are
packaged this way. Firefox also has an option to do this, and Firefox OS can
work without an internet connection. An HTML5 app is just source code obtained
from a website that's run through a VM, and may or may not connect to a back-
end (usually does though).

The problem isn't the web, it's how many web developers choose to use it. If
you want to really know how powerful the web is, check out many of the WebGL
demos and game demos out there...

------
just2n
Maybe it's because you don't typically see an "app" that is just completely
unusable on your device.

When the vast majority of simple websites (not even applications) have
_terrible_ experiences on mobile web browsers, is it really any surprise that
users prefer using an app that at least puts effort into being usable?

HN and at least 80% of the linked articles I read on my commute have terrible
mobile interfaces.

I really don't see the "performance" argument. It's unlikely anything you
build natively is going to compete with a browser's raw HTML/CSS performance.
That's something they do _incredibly_ well. And really, that's all a static
blog needs to be. I don't need your comments. I don't need your ads. I don't
need your HTTPS. I don't need your massively broken up application that
requires a GET for every asset on the page (and the 20+ JS files you've
decided not to package together, none of which is needed). I don't need your
parallax effects, your hover/click listeners, your scroll events, your damn
lightboxes, or your image rotators.

At the end of the day, I don't use the mobile web very much. It's not because
mobile web sucks. It's because nearly everything on the mobile web sucks.

~~~
methodover
More than anything else, I wish simple web pages were vogue.

Complex web pages are a pain to maintain. They're a huge liability, really.
And there's really no need for them to be so complex.

The only reason I can see is people who have little understanding of how web
pages are constructed are usually the ones in charge of designing them.

... Maybe I should transition over to web design.

------
chuckledog
The web was originally a means to collaboratively publish helpful
documentation stacks and research papers. It was and still is rooted in
"document objects", not apps and certainly not monetization. To recoup the
costs of authoring these help files, we have to rent out real estate in the
margins.

Apps predated this model in more or less the same form we currently find them,
with monetization inherent in the distribution model.

If native apps are dominating web pages in some medium e.g. portables and
wearables, maybe that means the audience of that medium isn't inclined to
create links or author documents, so isn't well served by the web model there.
Specialized apps will tend to serve their specific needs better, especially if
they can be monetized easily.

There will always be a place for the web, and for the dedicated app. "Web
apps" were and are a bit of a hack, although often a very useful one.
Creativity can be channeled into all of these media, and the barriers to entry
are lowering for all of them. It's a great time to be online. As long as IP
remains ubiquitous, I imagine there will always be a market outside of the
AOLs, Apple Stores, Google Stores etc.

------
tieTYT
I think this article is about web sites, but if you're a game developer, it
feels like google and apple are actively trying to kill off the web option, or
at least don't care about it. It's easy to find complaints about how audio is
terrible in HTML5 on mobile devices, but its been that way for years. I still
don't think you can play two sounds simultaneously on mobile safari (eg:
background music and a sound effect).

~~~
Mikeb85
Audio has also been spotty on Linux for years. I know that at least Chrome can
play 2 sounds at once (music + sound effects in a game)...

------
coffeecodecouch
The problem is that the large majority of people, even the youth of today[0],
are incredibly un-tech savvy. Unless your website or game is packaged into a
simple app you just can't rely on people to visit it or even find it in the
first place.

[0] [http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-
comput...](http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/)

~~~
frik
Yes, that's exactly the problem. Kids that are born in the 90ies and younger
see computer "gadgets" as given. They don't try to play around with it and
discover its functionality. They just play casual games on smartphones and
video consoles. They hate computer science classes in school, etc. And as a
result they are incredibly un-tech savvy. But it's also the elder generation
(60+) that just bought their first computer device (smartphones/tablets).

------
pistle
web/app is not zero sum.

There is a wide overlap in functionality, but if the experience via mobile
browser is sufficient, users won't care. They may even enjoy not having to
curate yet another app.

App Pros: Engagement lock-in Richer experiences (performance, native
advantages)

App Cons: Dev costs Fragmentation costs Dependency on ecosystem(s) App release
cycle + cross platform synchro of dev efforts

~~~
jbigelow76
Agreed. I used to be much more strident about pushing open web over native
apps. But my opinion has changed, I think of the open web as the APIs behind
both the apps and browsers.

------
kayoone
Reality is that the mobile web experience currently is worse than native
mobile apps. No matter how much you want "open", or how much faster your
latest web-mobile framework is, right now people still prefer the app
experience. That might change, but i suspect it will take some time.

~~~
diminish
5" or larger iphone may change US iphone users attitude on app vs web
decision..On my tablet and 6" phablet I avoid apps as much as I can.. Since I
disagree with you I'm curious of your smartphone size..

~~~
kayoone
I want the mobile web to succeed as much as the next guy here, i am just
talking about the general smartphone using population. But even for me, things
like twitter/facebook/youtube are just a better experience in app form.

------
KaiserPro
Part of the reason why people prefer "apps" to mobile websites is speed.

Mobile website, infact normal websites are large, clunky and not designed for
fingers, or high latency.

------
bertil
I fully appreciate the problem with not interoperable application and the
large benefits of a fully URIed web; however, making progress in usability
requires a flexibility that this scheme doesn’t match, hence the success not
just of mobile apps, but Ajax before them -- success that occasionally went
back to its origin and reassigned URI throughout (thank you GMail).

However, one thing is not true in what he says:

> Apps have a rich-get-richer dynamic

Yes, indeed, but so do websites; portalisation, or more simply the shear
number of sites people visit spontaneously is not less than the number of apps
they use regularly: three to five versus a dozen. There is a problem at the
lower end of that spectrum: while the sites big enough overall to make an be
maintained it are actually more common than apps that can do the same, users
tend to spend an almost exclusive share their time in said ten-to-fifteen
apps, and that challenges discoverability, _i.e._ the renewal of that class.
That’s where the issue is, not in how many apps cover 80% of usage, or how
many first letters people type before their browser auto-complete the rest.

(On that, I wonder how much the lack of success of Readability has to do with
starting with the same letter as Reddit)

------
faddotio
I think this is the price we pay for hewing to the party line of only
permitting non-breaking incremental changes on the Web.

Would this still be the case if Web development wasn't a broken matrix of
browser and OS versions powered by a language which people are constantly
trying to paper over with abstractions? (Seriously, it's like a person you'd
only have sex with as long as you'd put a paper bag over their head.)

~~~
eloisant
That's the price to pay for having an open platform indeed. Several players,
and none of them control the platform.

But that's the whole point of the web. If it was broken into 2 platforms, each
fully controlled by a company, we would see quicker innovation. But then we'd
have all the drawbacks of apps, so what's the point?

------
julien
"This is why you see so many popups and banners on mobile websites that try to
get you to download apps. It is also why so many mobile websites are broken."

Huh, is that surprising? They break their mobile sites and expect people to
still use them more than apps? This is self fulfulling: if you make a sucky
website, people will NOT use it. Make a wonderful mobile site and people will
not care about your apps.

------
njohnw
It's difficult to reconcile the Flurry stats with the fact that most blogs /
publishers are seeing a higher percentage of their traffic come from mobile
web (>50% in many cases).

One reason could be that their stats don't include mobile web usage within
apps (i.e. FB / Twitter). That discounts a lot of my own browsing behavior.

~~~
gopher1
Also, as someone pointed out in the comments of the article, if you count
video games in the "time spent in apps", then really it's the gaming consoles
and devices that are losing out, not mobile websites, so the discrepancy
between web and apps is overstated.

As always, look at the data for your own website/service before deciding which
path to take.

------
wahnfrieden
Cached URL:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.cdi...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.cdixon.org/2014/04/07/the-
decline-of-the-mobile-web/&es_sm=91&strip=0)

(It's erroring out in production.)

~~~
evmar
Here's the text-only cached URL (your link wouldn't load for me because it was
blocked on stylesheets or whatever)

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.cdi...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.cdixon.org/2014/04/07/the-
decline-of-the-mobile-web/&es_sm=91&strip=1)

------
ThomPete
What I am more interested in is whether the usage of the mobile web is on a
decline in absolute numbers or only relative to apps.

Anyone got the numbers for that?

Also this might be a stupid question but are Safari and Chrome considered apps
in this context? I.e. do they count as app usages or web usage?

------
marknutter
cached: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fk-
RAMh...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fk-
RAMhr0VUJ:www.cdixon.org/2014/04/07/the-decline-of-the-mobile-
web/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

And text:

People are spending more time on mobile vs desktop:

And more of their mobile time using apps, not the web:

This is a worrisome trend for the web. Mobile is the future. What wins mobile,
wins the Internet. Right now, apps are winning and the web is losing.

Moreover, there are signs that it will only get worse. Ask any web company and
they will tell you that they value app users more than web users. This is why
you see so many popups and banners on mobile websites that try to get you to
download apps. It is also why so many mobile websites are broken. Resources
are going to app development over web development. As the mobile web UX
further deteriorates, the momentum toward apps will only increase.

The likely end state is the web becomes a niche product used for things like
1) trying a service before you download the app, 2) consuming long tail
content (e.g. link to a niche blog from Twitter or Facebook feed).

This will hurt long-term innovation from a number of reasons:

1) Apps have a rich-get-richer dynamic that favors the status quo over new
innovations. Popular apps get home screen placement, get used more, get ranked
higher in app stores, make more money, can pay more for distribution, etc. The
end state will probably be like cable TV – a few dominant channels/apps that
sit on users’ home screens and everything else relegated to lower tiers or
irrelevance.

2) Apps are heavily controlled by the dominant app stores owners, Apple and
Google. Google and Apple control what apps are allowed to exist, how apps are
built, what apps get promoted, and charge a 30% tax on revenues.

Most worrisome: they reject entire classes of apps without stated reasons or
allowing for recourse (e.g. Apple has rejected all apps related to Bitcoin).
The open architecture of the web led to an incredible era of experimentation.
Many startups are controversial when they are first founded. What if AOL or
some other central gatekeeper had controlled the web, and developers had to
ask permission to create Google, Youtube, eBay, Paypal, Wikipedia, Twitter,
Facebook, etc. Sadly, this is where we’re headed on mobile.

------
protomyth
Which is easier to code: a mobile app or a mobile website? The tools are much
better for the mobile app and it is much easier to do cool stuff. Plus the
testing time is much quicker. Path of least resistance and biggest wow.

~~~
joshfraser
I don't agree that mobile apps are easier to build than mobile websites.
Certainly not for anyone with a background in building for the web.

~~~
protomyth
Which particular development tools do you use that are easier than the mobile
equivalents?

~~~
mavdi
I find HTML/CSS works very well with Android screen size chaos. Also when
coding iOS I have to drastically switch context between a web based backend
and a frankenstein language(s?) from 80s.

------
marknutter
Open your phone and take note of the apps it has installed on it. How many of
those apps are basics CRUD wrappers? Phones will only continue to get faster
but these types of apps will stop pushing the envelope at some point. There's
only so many fancy transparent swiping swooshing crap you can add to an app
before you start to detract from the experience. At some point, mobile web
apps will be just as performing as most native apps (we may already be there)
at which point people will start to balk at the ridiculousness of having to
write 3+ versions of the same damn CRUD app

------
bigethan
We recently rewrote our mobile website to be a much more modern experience (
[http://m.trulia.com](http://m.trulia.com) ). Our ability to easily deploy and
test ideas while behaving almost exactly like our iOS / Android apps is quite
powerful. It's also added a lot to the value of a web visitor, which is
important given the SEO nature of our content.

In general, I agree with the sentiment that the mobile web is only now getting
it's feet under it. My main concern is that Apple/Google prefer app
improvements over improving their browsers.

~~~
chris_mahan
I just went to m.trulia.com on firefox on android on HTC One 4GLTE and got
sent to the "Download our free app" (in orange button). When I clicked on
Continue to mobile Site at the top (green), The site was dirt slow loading
photos of a bunch of homes. (granted, my network sucks where I am... but
that's the point: bad network)

------
ljak
I usually discover web content through social sites like Reddit, Facebook, or
Twitter. On mobile, such sites have built-in browsers, and I suspect that most
"app" traffic is actually of this nature.

------
z3t4
The web is for information. It was not made to emulate desktop or mobile
applications.

That said. Information can mean many things. And there will be hybrids.

You can do offline apps in HTML+CSS+JS right now, but it's a PITA:

var a = document.createElement("a");

a.appendChild(document.createTextNode("hacker news");

a.setAttribute("href",
"[https://news.ycombinator.com/");](https://news.ycombinator.com/"\);)

If your app contains information, it's best suited for the www. But if it only
contains a canvas, it's more suited as a native app.

------
clarky07
As an app developer, I like this trend. More time on mobile and more time in
apps. Both good things for me.

That being said, I think the more time in apps vs mobile web might be a bit
misleading. How many apps out there have webviews taking you to the web for
various reasons? I can only imagine this time is counted as app time for the
graph in the article, but it's really web time for all intents and purposes.

And frankly, I think that this is a much better user experience in a lot of
ways. the facebook native app is much better than the web version is and even
really could be (at least at this point). Much of what happens in that app
though is clicking on websites to random articles around the web, and that is
done in a webview inside the app. I like the app over the website, and i
definitely don't want it to kick me out to safari while I'm in the app. This
is a good ux, but I think it skews the data in this article. How many other
apps have similar functionality?

All that being said, I strongly prefer the experience of native apps over the
web, but I'm only interested in using the app if it's something I'm going to
use all the time. If I need your site 1 time ever, I'm not wasting time
downloading the app. If I use it every day, I absolutely would rather have an
app. For everyone saying "Hell no I don't want your app", I suspect the above
is actually true for a significant majority of people. 1 time use people don't
want app. Repeated use people do want app.

------
gdubs
Really need more data on this besides a set from flurry -- I'm not convinced
that mobile web is declining just from that one graph... (Especially since
flurry is aimed at app developers.)

------
bowlofpetunias
The mobile web experience is just not good enough _yet_.

But we've seen this pattern multiple times over the past 15+ years, the open
web by its very nature needs time to catch up.

It doesn't mean that the current state of affairs is final.

It took the open web over a decade to start making proprietary "rich media"
solutions like Flash obsolete. These things take time.

Open web will never be at the lead of innovation, it just provides the
foundation for it. Also, most mobile apps still use the web to be networked.
The browser is not the web.

------
AznHisoka
I think OP is living in a bubble. I don't use more than a few apps everyday,
and I do almost 90% of my online reading in my desktop. I spend 8 hours a day
in front of a computer at work. The only time I have to poke around with my
smartphone is after work, and a hour of that is spent in a subway with no
online connection.

I mean, I guess if you have FU money, don't work for the man, and travel to
wherever you want with WiFi, sure, you probably spend more time poking with
apps than you do in a desktop.

------
orky56
Discovery, usage, and feedback are all more polished in native apps rather
than on mobile web. Mobile web is the wild west in terms of experience and
more of a stepping stone until you get frustrated enough to download the app
or ditch that service altogether if they don't have a native app. Mobile web
has lost many of its benefits due to some very distinct reasons.

Lack a stable Internet connection? Native wins

Home screen apps vs Bookmarks in browser? Native wins

Ease of discovery? Native wins

Ideal user experience? Native wins

Mobile web is lagging behind for good reason.

~~~
smacktoward
_> Lack a stable Internet connection? Native wins_

HTML5 offline storage should let a mobile-oriented site store a fair bit of
data offline, to avoid having to go out and fetch everything anew all the
time. It's just that few web developers design that way b/c we've all been
spoiled by desktop users' broadband connections.

 _> Home screen apps vs Bookmarks in browser? Native wins_

My Galaxy S3 lets me set bookmarks for sites on the home screen (and anywhere
else in the launcher I would wish to).

 _> Ease of discovery? Native wins_

Slogging through ten million clones in an app store counts as easy discovery?
OK.

 _> Ideal user experience? Native wins_

I'm not sure about that. We heard the same noise during the 2000s about how
users were going to prefer "rich client" apps to in-browser apps, because the
rich client apps would be able to respect their platform's native look and
feel. And then it turned out that "I can access it from anywhere without
installing anything" was something they cared about a lot more.

~~~
orky56
Those are all very fair points. Although devs and tech consumers may be able
to accomplish these things, the typical consumer doesn't understand or care
about these things. Dixon's article was focusing more on the end user side of
things and it's very clear what the demand is.

------
vivekjain10
While I'd love to see web replace native apps, I don't see that happening in
the near future. With the kind of innovation happening in the mobile space
(iBeacon, Android Wear, Background Fetch etc.) it's probably impossible for
the web to keep up.

But there is certainly a bubble in the app space which will bust sooner or
later. Not sure what will be the next big thing though. Web does not seem like
a candidate.

------
jaunkst
We are missing important metrics here. Mobile is getting more short intervals
of usage. We are connecting more often throughout our day were we otherwise
would not access a desktop. We need to consider the baseline of usage
historically to project a more accurate vector of platform use. Are we just
using the internet more in general? My bet is yes. This data is basically
incomplete.

------
increment_i
The web may or may not be in decline, but why worry about it? Clients that
consume services (be it web browsers, or apps or whatever) have always been in
a state of flux. The web was hot, now apps are, then something else will be,
then something else after that, ad infinitum. It sucks for developers, but
then again things have always kinda sucked for developers.

------
gz5
If app is the best hire for the job then so be it. Ditto web when it is best.
However the two dominant gatekeeper paradigm is scary.

------
altcognito
Or... people don't make mobile specific websites, they make a website that
adapts to mobile and label it responsive.

Also, I don't goto the web for anything I would do with an app generally
speaking. Camera, calendars.

The device makers don't have a huge incentive to improve web browsers either,
they have a store in which they want to take a piece of your earnings.

------
sriramyadavalli
The key issue is that mobile apps tend to be task oriented. A lot of web
companies (like FB) are not transitioning into app studios by breaking down a
monolithic site into set of mobile apps that deliver a single
feature/accomplish a single task.

If the open web were to be redefined along those lines, I dont see why users
wont use that.

------
whatts
Agree in general. This is worrisome. However, (1) is most probably
exaggerated. On mobile, you have an unbelievably broad selection, this will
never become an oligopoly. But big players will get bigger. Anyway, Firefox OS
may become a promising alternative, althought it comes with some of the same
downsides.

------
chrisdevereux
Even if apps totally won, it wouldn't mean that the mobile web lost. 100%
mobile app usage wouldn't imply 0% mobile web usage.

Someone might spend way more time in Facebook.app than Safari.app, but within
that, they might spend most of their time on pages linked to from their
Facebook feed.

------
EGreg
Companies care about user engagement, and that is driven by two major things:
transactional notifications, and easy access. Apps provide both, while the web
is a second class citizen on mobiles. Consider that web apps still cannot send
In-App Notifications and can’t perform In-App Purchases. So, even if I do
create a kick-ass web app, I would have to rely on — wait for it — SMS to
deliver notifications to my users. I would have to rely on people manually
typing in numbers in order to invite people, so viral spreading won’t be so
great either. In short, even if we wanted to create a mobile web app instead —
and we do — the ecosystem will select for the native apps in the long run.

And Apple, at least, is keeping things that way on purpose. Consider this dig
at Google by the master himself, Steve Jobs — a few years ago:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWd-
xXfIEpE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWd-xXfIEpE)

He was saying “for some reason” but really the reasons for choosing apps over
web are enabled largely by these platforms themselves. Because they are more
locked-down, they won’t allow too much integration, and it’s harder to get web
apps to catch on.

That said, three years ago I really became passionate about the problem of
decentralizing the consumer internet again. We can see with git and other
tools how distributed workflows are better in many ways than centralized ones.
The internet was originally designed to be decentralized, with no single point
of failure, but there’s a strong tendency for services to crop up and use
network effects to amass lots of users. VC firms have a thesis to invest in
such companies. While this is true, the future is in distributed computing,
like WordPress for blogs or Git for version control.

Shameless plug: Qbix (my company) has been hard at work the last 3 years
building an open, web-based platform that takes advantage of PhoneGap
(Cordova) and emerging containers like MacGap and now WinJS! Write once,
deploy anywhere, as a social app with contacts / roles / permissions /
notifications / etc. working across all devices and integrated. So developers
can focus on building the app and get best practices for virality and
engagement (without annoying people) out of the box.

[http://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/a-new-kind-of-
platfor...](http://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/a-new-kind-of-platform/)

[http://platform.qbix.com](http://platform.qbix.com)

------
perlpimp
when you will be able to integrate web into mobile OS then we will be talking.
Mobile just in a browser window is unexciting and cumbersome. Mobile Internet,
I wouldn't call it so much the web but more like integrated experience can
bring so much more to the mobile platform. but it would take another Apple
with Steve Jobs to implement it(IMO). Basically it is unploughed field and
investment need is of investment of epic proportion of research and monetary
kind. The whole look and feel of mobile OSes has to change. Mobile Internet is
kind of boring when it is contrained to just one of little boxes on the
screen, if mobile has access to OS services that would another thing.

my 2c

------
adventured
It's deeply ironic that much of Silicon Valley spent the 90's obsessed that
Microsoft would become the gate-keeper to the Internet and or Web, and be able
to levy a toll accordingly.

And here we are, with Silicon Valley as the gate-keeper instead.

------
colemorrison
So I keep seeing this point:

"Web applications on the desktop are way ahead of where they used to be. In a
few years, it'll be the same for mobile web apps... they'll catch up to the
native performance."

But this always seems to overlook another question...

"Where will native desktop and mobile apps be in a few years?"

I have no doubt that mobile web apps will catch up to the performance of
CURRENT native apps. However, I absolutely doubt they'll be up to par with the
native standard of their time. Web apps progress, but so do native. Worse of
all (best of all?) it puts users into the habit and comfort of native and
makes the standard for web increase.

------
pbreit
I don't think it changes the numbers too much but do these numbers consider
web usage inside apps like Facebook and gmail?

Apps have an enormous advantage when it comes to acces to the device like
photos, camera, address book and notifications.

------
JacksonGariety
Down for anyone else?

    
    
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------
dylanlacom
One thing that I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned are app updates. Updating
apps is a pain for the user and a bottleneck for devs. This alone seems like a
compelling reason to choose mobile web over native.

------
chibicode
Seems relevant: "App-pocalypse Now" by Jeff Atwood
[http://blog.codinghorror.com/app-pocalypse-
now/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/app-pocalypse-now/)

------
mavdi
I'm all for web apps but I have to admit, when I'm using an app frequently I
always download the native app. In most cases it's just a better, faster and
smoother experience.

------
blueskin_
This is both bad and good.

Good: It might stop the rot of websites turning their whole site into a mobile
version with fat-finger buttons and massive text, if websites become the means
of interacting for people with real computers again.

Bad: Apps are a far bigger security risk, and prevent casual interaction (i.e.
following a link onto something, then going somewhere else) - having an app
means you're in a selfcontained site and are kept there until you close the
app and open another.

------
applecore
We'll see a third platform emerge in the next few years that combines the best
of native apps and the mobile web.

It will probably be based on cards as the unit of interaction.

~~~
charliemagee
Yes! Time to relearn HyperCard.

------
TomAnthony
There is a point here that many websites don't need an app, but have them as
part of a fad.

However, on the flip side as wearable tech becomes more and more prevalent
(think Google Glass, but also things like Jawbone), it make a lot of sense
that more and more of our internet usage goes via these interfaces which are
inherently non-web.

~~~
cshipley
I've coded for google glass, and I don't think our internet usage will go via
wearable things -- at least not ones like glass.

Information displayed needs to be understandable at a glance and relevant to
the very here and now. Usable real estate is extremely limited in glass and
interaction is limited to voice, simple gestures against the right frame, and
GPS/accelerometer. So doing interaction with any amount of complexity gets
frustrating and annoying very quickly.

------
mleach
I spend an hour a day on Twitter during my Caltrain commute.

I click on links that open up a UIWebView and read articles on the web.

Does that count as one hour in an "app"? In reality, it's more like 20% in the
app and 80% following shared web links.

------
normloman
Sure, mobile apps will replace web apps. Way better performance. But who's
gonna download an app to read a wikipedia article? The web ain't just apps
people. It's supposed to be for documents.

------
LeicaLatte
The web is a chaotic mess and deserves the ignorance. We can't agree on
standards and propagate such shortcomings and much more to the user. We have
distracted ourselves with crap like browser wars, popup ads, "enable
javascript for this page to work" for too long a time.

I don't see why we have to put our users through the web, just because its
easy for us to develop or deliver for it.

Consumers have taken to apps like never before. Asking them to regress is
stupidity. Take the simplest case of loss of internet connection. Browsers and
browser apps continue to be terrible when your million dollar "UX" is replaced
with an irresponsible "Page cannot be displayed" and no concept of offline
experience.

Fuck browsers and mobile web. Please let's not go back.

------
harrystone
So the Eternal September is going to end after all.

------
chippy
The key word here is "web"

Web - interconnections, links.

You don't get that with apps.

------
stevewilhelm
Mobile websites can not send push notifications, use location information,
receive iBeacon broadcasts, etc.

To provide a state of the art user experience on mobile devices, you need to
write an app.

~~~
untog
They can use location information. And gyroscope and accelerometer.

The issue is that apps are diverting attention - otherwise mobile browsers
might have implemented push notifications for pages by now. Firefox OS does
it, and Safari on desktop has notifications. It's close, but no-one is
shouting at the manufacturers to push it over the line.

~~~
bennettfeely
HTML5 is catching up though, the Device orientation API, getUserMedia API,
Notification API, etc. bring native app functionality to websites.

~~~
untog
Right but what incentive does Apple have to implement that spec?

------
IpxqwidxG
In my opinion mobile web is yet to arrive, we have just gotten HTML5 standards
finalized only about an year ago.

While native has had roughly seven years lead when it comes to providing
quality online experience, web apps can beat native easily. And no it's not
that web apps or web development or talent for mobile web development is
limited or is the bottleneck.

The bottleneck is usually the vendors and support of standards in the existing
breed of mobile browsers that destroy the web experience.

For example, Apple introduced this shitty non-standard swipe gesture feature
on iPhone Safari/iOS7 that breaks so many things:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18889666/ios-7-is-
there-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18889666/ios-7-is-there-a-way-
to-disable-the-swipe-back-and-forward-functionality-in-sa)

But I think this will change with more competition among tablets and mobiles.
IMHO, it is normal for the web to catch up a little later; but when it does
native will find it hard to breath.

~~~
mmahemoff
The "HTML5 will catch up" argument is a common fallacy. It assumes native apps
are standing still, when in fact they are moving rapidly forward. If anything,
the gap continues to grow. The web isn't even in their cross-hairs, there's
just so much effort for each native platform to keep surging ahead of the
others.

If you think Android and iOS are "done", consider where they are headed and
you can see they are barely getting started. Consider input such as speed,
physical gestures, breathing, brain activity. All manner of form factors.
Integration with the "real world" such as Nest and Square. Wearables, cars,
home appliances ...

Whatever early-stage web APIs exist for these things are _vastly_ ,
_tragically_ , fragmented across the various HTML5 runtimes.

The "other web", that of HTTP and REST and JSON and cloud services, is a
freaking wonder of engineering and a giant productivity boost to developers of
any client. But the UI side of the web is continuing to trail for now.
Competition among tablets and mobiles will help native apps as much as it will
help the web.

~~~
marknutter
> It assumes native apps are standing still, when in fact they are moving
> rapidly forward. If anything, the gap continues to grow.

I'm sorry, but there are only so many ways you can display a CRUD application.
I don't see the next versions of Twitter and Instagram pushing the hardware
much more than they are today..

~~~
mmahemoff
People said the same about terminal-based applications when windows came
along. It just takes some imagination Do you really think Instagram and
Twitter will be running on the same form factors and look+feel the same in 10
years?

Twitter and Instagram as photo-heavy apps could eventually support 3D models
of the world, drone photography, wearables etc (Twitter already has a Glass
app).

Same for their notifications - all sorts are possible on watches, speech, car
dashboards.

And that's just assuming they stand still functionally.

As for CRUD apps, there's loads of innovation happening. Look at Amazon's new
Dash device as one of many examples that change the interaction style from
clicking on a web page to speech + real-world scanning. I'm guessing it's not
powered by HTML5.

