> a fact which is proven by how dominant web is over native software despite it's many shortcomings.
I wish it was, perhaps may be by numbers i.e. websites vs native software but if we take mobile ecosystem, native applications rule and many of the web pages are just landing pages for those mobile apps.
Smartphones are the first computers for majority of the world and significant population among them would have never opened a browser to enter an URL but perhaps would have used WhatsApp to click a link and opened it in built-in browser.
Even in web, mobile visitors has long overtaken desktop but again how much of it is organic i.e. direct or search when compared to those from social media, chat apps which again are likely to be native apps(and opened in built-in browser).
After a decade of developing mobile(native) apps for all major platforms I've quit native mobile app development and have started to focus my efforts back on web; My audience are intentionally those who wouldn't mind using a web application but I still occasionally receive questions from a new user like 'Is there an app for this'.
I strongly believe that until the duopoly in mobile ecosystem is fixed, Web is under serious threat.
> I wish it was, perhaps may be by numbers i.e. websites vs native software but if we take mobile ecosystem, native applications rule and many of the web pages are just landing pages for those mobile apps.
Largely because iphone doesn't let you install a proper browser that doesn't lack most features from the past decade, and iphone users is where the money is at so that is what companies targets.
Although iOS browser locking is troublesome and dangerous for free and open web it's not the reason for why native apps are preferred on smartphones; It's because mobile apps are easy to access, faster to use and Big Tech invest humongous amount of money in promoting those apps as it can siphon more data.
Easier than typing a web page once and then maybe clicking "add to my home screen"? Which is how PWAs work. They are great on Android, but iphone has deliberately not supported the standard.
> faster to use
Citation needed.
> Big Tech invest humongous amount of money in promoting those apps
Again, apple doesn't support the web, so companies that want to leverage web capabilities are forced to develop native apple apps.
I wish it was, perhaps may be by numbers i.e. websites vs native software but if we take mobile ecosystem, native applications rule and many of the web pages are just landing pages for those mobile apps.
Smartphones are the first computers for majority of the world and significant population among them would have never opened a browser to enter an URL but perhaps would have used WhatsApp to click a link and opened it in built-in browser.
Even in web, mobile visitors has long overtaken desktop but again how much of it is organic i.e. direct or search when compared to those from social media, chat apps which again are likely to be native apps(and opened in built-in browser).
After a decade of developing mobile(native) apps for all major platforms I've quit native mobile app development and have started to focus my efforts back on web; My audience are intentionally those who wouldn't mind using a web application but I still occasionally receive questions from a new user like 'Is there an app for this'.
I strongly believe that until the duopoly in mobile ecosystem is fixed, Web is under serious threat.