The Decline of the Mobile Web

No, most users are like you and wonder why every bank, florist, fast food chain, ISP has an app (that generally doesn’t do what you’d expect it to do). Even tailored Analytics solutions have apps. However, creating an app is not decided by those users directly: it’s a small and simple project by HN standards, one that most middle-to-large company has felt compelled to attempt to look cool, but it remains too difficult for most users who’d prefer synergies.

That's why I have (and alas, need) 15 airline apps, but actually would prefer to have only two that could handle everything much better: Kayak and Apple’s Passbook.

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.

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.

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)

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?