Mobile Apps are hot for now and phone operating systems (OS) are compared by how many apps they have. But mobile apps are a move backwards from web applications and their advantages are disappearing as mobile browsers continue make remedies for some key missing features including:
- Missing the ability to work offline,
- Limited input from a device,
- Lack of native device speed for computing,
- Limited computer language and database support,
- Design and media limitations,
- Lack of background or advanced notification capability (think ringtones),
- Harder to enforce pay wall for content and app,
With HTML5 and some other browser improvements the gap is quickly diminishing. One of the best improvements is the ability of the browser to keep a web site or web app working when the mobile or tablet goes offline. One fantastic example of this and a great resource on browsers is: http://www.20thingsilearned.com/html5/2
So if most of an app is content, it might make more sense to make sure the site works offline than worry about developing mobile apps for each of the mobile app platforms/OSs: iPhone, iPad, Android, Honeycomb, Windows Mobile, RIM Playbook, HP/WebOS, etc. This is almost like the parallel to PC OS compared to web/cloud application competition. Except for high-end game development and some audio/video communications, most applications fit well within the browser environment. I think that this will also be the case in the mobile world as well especially once people learn to pay for web applications like they do so easily for mobile apps.
For more on this:
http://diveintohtml5.org/offline.html
http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/
