Live data from Hacker News

Mobile shift: You’ve probably underestimated just how big this is

trigger.io

61–70 of 123 posts

Re: Mobile shift: You’ve probably underestimated just how big this is

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the opposite. Almost everyone I know uses the native facebook app versus going to m.facebook.com. Most people only use a few websites/apps on their phones, and I think it's just simpler to tap on the app icon rather than start up mobile safari and type m.facebook.com.

The "native" facebook app is just an html5 webapp believe it or not.

No, some minor parts are done with webview, but most of it isn't, at least not for the iPhone. There is a huge library called Three20 that was created while the app was developed (as far as I know).

Re: Mobile shift: You’ve probably underestimated just how big this is

#62
I think this is misleading.

It's true that there's a mobile shift in _startup_. Most startups want to hit the mobile goldmine and become the next [enter a company here]. However, we fail to understand that those important minutes spent are spent on either games, which are consumed in matter of days (There's not many games that sustain growth for over a period of a few months), and services that, for the most part, already had a web presence.

Here's my rationale: If your startup/internet service company wants to be successful, it will have to have a mobile presence, if it doesn't, opportunity from competitor will arise and you might get into trouble.

However, considering the cost of a native mobile app (iOS or Android), I wouldn't be surprised if within 2-3 years, startup would go back to focus on web first and if traction occurs, expanding to the mobile area (Except for startup that leverage the mobile hardware, ie camera, geo-location, etc)

Re: Mobile shift: You’ve probably underestimated just how big this is

#63
post #12
post #2

One of the first signs I noticed of this was startups we funded not caring much what their domain name was. IIRC that trend began about a year to 18 months ago.

I wonder how mobile web fits into this. Sure, native apps are great, but I'd much prefer to not need to switch between a bunch of native apps and just use my phone's web browser. Mobile web apps like Facebook prove that you can build a non-trivial app that runs in a web browser and have the experience be so good that people don't even care about the native app version (at least everyone I know just uses Facebook righ…

I think you might want to question your assumptions. The reason you want to do everything in the browser is probably twofold:

1) Inertia (that's the way I've been doing it for a decade, dagnammit), and

2) It's an easier context-switch. Rather than go back to the home screen, swipe over to the next app, and tap it, you just just type in the first few letters of the url, then select the site you want to go to from the drop down list.

But

1) Has had pretty poor predictive value in the last few years, and there's no reason to suggest it'll improve. Our entire industry is built around disrupting inertia.

2) Is ripe for disruption. At the end of the day, when you get right down to it, entering the first few letters of a url then selecting the correct site is both an arbitrary, and not particularly optimized workflow. The fact that we are used to it does not mean there aren't far better systems out there. Sure, Chrome on my MBP has learned to take me to my top 10 sites with cmd-l -> $url[0] -> enter, but my mom needs her buttons on the bookmark bar. I tried to remove the titles, thinking she could easily recognize the favicons, but no dice. She needs a start menu-like interface.

Similarly, I was on the bus with my friend, browsing reddit. He buys tons of apps for his iPhone, and he looks at my screen and says, "is their mobile app free?" I said, "well, yes, but most people just browse to reddit.com/.compact". he stared at me in disbelief. Why would you use the browser if you can have an app?

For those of us who live and breath the Internet, it seems only natural that a write-once-run-anywhere website would be more appealing than having to download some stupid app from some stupid store, type in your password, then have to remember which home screen it's on, etc. For those who use the internet as casual content consumers, however, apps take a lot of the frustration out of it. Want to read the economist? Tap the economist button. That's it. Want to watch a youtube video? Tap the youtube button. Need directions? Tap the map button.

For the casual user, these workflows are far more intuitive. My friend, who has spent hundreds of dollars in the App Store, rarely uses the browser on his phone. He uses the Plenty of Fish app, the Chive app, etc. For most non-technical users, this just makes sense. It might seem annoying to us, but we are not the largest market segment by far.

Now it might be that we'll see mobile web sites with a light wrapper disguised as apps; perhaps cache and a link that opens in the browser. Maybe we'll see native support for the kinds of things that are typically done in the browser. But, crucially, what I don't think we'll see is the dominance of mobile web over native clients. For the vast majority of people out there, I think they just want the app.

Re: Mobile shift: You’ve probably underestimated just how big this is

#64
Comparing apples to oranges here. Most apps are tools, something you use... While most sites aren't and only provide information.

Also, I can casually browse dozens of sites and completely forget about them afterwards... I don't casually install dozens of apps.

Re: Mobile shift: You’ve probably underestimated just how big this is

#65
post #62

I think this is misleading. It's true that there's a mobile shift in _startup_. Most startups want to hit the mobile goldmine and become the next [enter a company here]. However, we fail to understand that those important minutes spent are spent on either games, which are consumed in matter of days (There's not many games that sustain growth for over a period of a few months), and services that, for the most part, al…

Also, for all those minutes used, how many of them are used by Facebook, Maps, and other service that started has a web service first

Re: Mobile shift: You’ve probably underestimated just how big this is

#66
this article seems to be implying that mobile and app are synonymous. as far as i can tell, the fact that desktop apps and mobile websites exist is totally ignored. is this about a shift from web to app, or a shift from desktop to mobile? and what about mobile web use?

Re: Mobile shift: You’ve probably underestimated just how big this is

#67
post #53
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a large part of it is also form factor. My phone could have the power of 3 super computers, but i'd still choose my laptop over it. I prefer a larger screen, and a real keyboard. For a mobile device to replace my desktop/laptop user interfaces + form factors are going to need some rapid advances.

Foldable keyboards and dirt cheap projection technologies could mitigate the form factor issues. How about holographic displays? Or huds?

Sure, but not anytime soon.

Re: Mobile shift: You’ve probably underestimated just how big this is

#68
post #2

One of the first signs I noticed of this was startups we funded not caring much what their domain name was. IIRC that trend began about a year to 18 months ago.

On the other hand, Fred Wilson still considers a good domain name an important success factor for startups and is something they take into account when evaluating whether to invest. http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-...

Re: Mobile shift: You’ve probably underestimated just how big this is

#69
Is there some place we can all share data (perhaps anonymously) about what % of our users are using mobile browsers? I'll go first: on one of our large-ish travel websites, almost 10% of our users were using a mobile browser (this includes both phones and quasi-mobile devices like tablets). This site isn't very well tuned for mobile so I was pretty surprised by the numbers. We do not have a mobile app.
Post reply on HN