We've been conditioned to want apps. Or... many people have. iPhone is synonymous with 'apps'. My grandmother understands 'apps' (well, mostly!)
I was on a project last year, and we built a mobile website (could work in iPhone/Android and probably winphone, but we didn't test). Got a lot of immediate "yeah that's great" from some people. Partners reached out for potential customers/sales - every single one returned with "where do I get the app".
I'm continually disappointed by the non-proliferation of webapps. The iPhone has hooks enabling you to make it fullscreen, have an app icon, work offline, even control the colour of the status bar... but no-one knows how to use them. And Android doesn't even support them- I thought Google was supposed to be a friend of the web?!
In theory you're right. Unfortunately in practice most webapps better stay in the browser on iOS. The Javascript engine on full-screen webapps is slower than the one in Safari (that's why the previous Facebook app was slow as hell).
Aside from that, offline app cache is a PITA to implement.
Things have got better though. Web audio works on iOS 6, and Chrome on Android finally delivers a proper browser. I hope in a few years time we'll actually be able to serve games in WebGL to the browsers on both platforms.
The Javascript engine on full-screen webapps is slower than the one in Safari (that's why the previous Facebook app was slow as hell).
Not true[0]. Home-screen web apps use the Nitro engine as of iOS 5. It's only embedded web views (i.e. the Facebook app, Google Chrome on iOS) that don't. FWIW Chrome is my favorite browser on iOS, despite the speed loss.
We're solving that by actually having an app "installer" on the web page. It looks and feels like the App Store, and you "tap to install" just like you would a normal app.
We do actually download and stash most web resources, to speed up load times, so it's not completely window dressing. Our app is designed to be added to the Home Screen, but it also runs inside Safari or Chrome just fine.
They don't necessarily know what they need. Perhaps all they need is a bookmark for your site, exposed as a big button choice. You'd have to follow up with some testing to find out what this really meant.
Those people don't know what an app is. The people going "where's the app" will also look at your site on your phone and think it is an app. They just need a way to bookmark your site and see a little icon for it with their apps.
I was on a project last year, and we built a mobile website (could work in iPhone/Android and probably winphone, but we didn't test). Got a lot of immediate "yeah that's great" from some people. Partners reached out for potential customers/sales - every single one returned with "where do I get the app".
Us: "http://foobarsite.com.
Them: "Cool, but I can't see where to download the app!"
Us: "You don't - you just go to the website"
Them: "But I need an app!"