Mobile App or Browser-Based Site? Report Says The Browser Will Win on Mobile
Mobile search company Taptu has released a detailed report showing that the future of the Mobile Web is likely to be dominated by cross-platform browser-based mobile web sites - rather than apps built specifically for iPhone, Android, or any other platform. Taptu calls the former "the Mobile Touch Web," which it defines as "Web sites created for mobile touchscreen devices,
with finger-friendly layouts and lightweight pages that are fast to load over
cellular networks."
Taptu estimates that there are 326,000 Mobile Touch Web sites worldwide, which they say compares to 148,000 iPhone apps in the App Store and 24,000 apps in the Android market. Taptu expects the browser-based mobile web market to grow much faster than the app market.
What kinds of sites are more likely to be browser-based for mobile phones? According to the report, 19% of the mobile sites measured were Shopping & Services sites; compared to 3.6% in the same category in the App Store. Content in the 'Social' category also has a higher chance of being a browser-based mobile site, rather than an app (12.9% to 1.7%).
Conversely, just 0.8% of mobile sites were gaming, compared to 18% of apps in the App Store. There is a similar discrepency in the 'Entertainment' category.
It seems then that commerce services are taking more advantage of mobile web browsers than gaming and entertainment providers. But why? Taptu says it's because "many [Commerce] products and services do not really fit into Apple's iTunes content-oriented billing system." Meanwhile, gaming and entertainment content is better delivered as an app, says Taptu, "since apps deliver a much richer, more interactive gaming experience than the casual games available on the Mobile Web."
Taptu says that the increasing sophistication of mobile browsers is one reason why browser-based mobile sites will flourish. In particular, it points to increasing support for HTML 5. See our analysis of Web vs. Native Mobile Apps if you'd like to know more about this.
According to Taptu, "it's getting easier and easier to create rich touch screen user experiences with the browser without having to create platform-specific apps." Taptu also points to increasing usage of open standard APIs, enabling Mobile Web developers to access "deeper device functions such as geolocation."
Taptu does concede that gaming content will probably continue to be delivered predominantly as download apps on iPhone and similar devices. However it claims that for "many other types of app, the economics of software development and publishing favours the Web development route."
Taptu predicts that "the Mobile Touch Web will grow vigorously over the next five years, and will approach the quality of user experience of Mobile Touch Apps across all the app categories except for games."
We should note that Taptu is mostly a browser-based service, although it does offer apps for iPhone and other platforms too. But it obviously has a big stake in the success of the "touchscreen mobile web."
What do you think, do you agree that the future of Mobile Web development will lie in browser-based mobile sites? Or do you think the pull of advanced functionality as an app (on platforms such as iPhone and Android) will draw most types of content and services over time?
Update: The report is now available for download (PDF - 5MB) and a presentation is embedded below.
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It seems like Jobs may have been slightly ahead of his time when they launched the iphone and decided to only have web-based apps. Perhaps the age of apps will be short-lived and we'll revert back to web-only apps in the future. For gaming, either Apple will finally allow Flash on their browser or they'll release a compatible competitor plug-in - mobile gaming is going to be big and Flash seems to be the logical player. I'm not sure HTML 5 is going to be competitive against Flash for a while yet.
Also seems to me that the strategy we have taken to focus on a few phones also limits them as to the market, because that will make now that the technology advances and more phones come out, do a page for each?
It won't happen overnight, but I think they're right that this will happen. My gut is that their current numbers overstate the case (too many hacky iPhone-UI jobs layered on top of existing websites, and not enough purpose-built web apps in their counts), but if you limit the field to HTML5 and watch the numbers grow, it will be an interesting battle indeed.
Not coincidentally, we just released HTML5 app search + discovery support at AppStoreHQ (in addition to our native iPhone app search offering). It's still just a tiny fraction of our total inventory, but we'll make a point of sharing the numbers as they grow (and we'd love your help to make them grow! http://blog.appstorehq.com/post/367758335/html5-or-native-apps-either-way-weve-got-you )
browser you keep all the cash, app market you share the cash but get more distribution.
Posted by: Allen Stern
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February 2, 2010 8:12 PM
As the trend begins to show, certain applications are best left to the web, while others make more sense as native programs. I don't see any reason why the mobile web won't parallel the desktop/laptop web in that sense. Services which require greater use of hardware, as games do, in order to be successful must be native (think of all the gaming platforms). Ecommerce and publishing can definitely be web-based rather than native because microphones, temperature sensors, and accelerometers just aren't very necessary - at least when compared with the benefits of cross functionality. It just makes economic sense.
How will companies cope with creating sites viewable on different devices? The same way they do that now on the desktop web with different OSes, browsers, resolutions, and settings.
For many service-based apps this will be the direction. With multiple platforms to support it makes sense to provide the majority of applications executing in the cloud, eliminating pushed upgrades to millions of clients (AT&T might agree). Unsure from technical perspective what customizations html (sans plugins) can provide, I would have to say after observation of a few existing browser-based applications UI in its installed application counterpart makes a more pleasant end-user experience. This should be a priority to developers, as it may contribute to lower adoption.
There will always be the need for local applications and 'cricial' data (email, contacts, apps such as Evernote) to reside and execute locally, so it will not become a unilateral migration.
I'd much prefer browser-based applications, saving my local storage space for multimedia content. Remind me to sell Sandisk stock when this becomes reality. :)
Content type and development costs are at least two variables to consider in this decision of mobile app vs. mobile site. First is content type - does it change often? Is is media rich? Does it require interaction? Can it be stored locally or require remote access?
Second, is cost to develop - for the most part, a mobile site is less expensive to develop vs. a Mobile App. That's changing quickly in some niches and of course there are exceptions. For example, I can create a Wordpress mobile theme in minutes for free but to create a Mobile App might take a few hundred dollars. That's a simple example, but my guess is the same applies to more complex environments.
At the end of the day, my guess is that mobile sites will win over mobile apps in terms of volume created. Question is what will usage, ROI, and customer engagement look like?
This report seems counter intuitive...I would think that a requirement for real-time information and interaction (other than games) will demand a purpose built app? Every time I use a browser on my iPhone, the response/update rate has been less than satisfactory. Maybe that has to do with network overload?
I hesitate to compare it to Blackberry but if I could read/respond all my mail in the browser I would not need a client for it.
This is an argument I think people will ultimately decide.
All things being equal (platform standardization, hardware penetration, etc.), users will drive the market and decide which experience suits for which activities. The 'web' user experience has a lot of catching up to do with the iPhone/Android/Nexus etc., native application experience at the moment - that is for sure. But hardware penetration levels will be a barrier in the short to medium term.
Hi,
For developers currently accustomed to developing in Objective-C or J2ME, this might sound like crazy talk; in its current state, the only time we turn to the mobile web for app development is for the most basic of services. Twitter client? Sure. Complex 3D games? Yeah, probably not.It’s not going to happen tomorrow, nor even in the next year – but the short list of reasons to develop natively is growing shorter each day.
- Yes Browser Web development for PC and Mobile.
- Same content on any device
«anywhere, any device» access to content
- Content for all screen size. Example: http://www.1computer.info/
use technical: liquid design, Fonts EM, no tables, and no pix, ....
Browser based vs app depends on the use case as the reserach shows. Browser based always wins from a cost perspective for the producer. After the app hype the pendulum will swing back to a more normal state where there will be a massmarket opportunity for both apps and browser based services/sites.
I like the web as anyone, but this "report" is based on mere speculation.
Webapps require devices and data plans that are too expensive for the majority of consumers. And independent devs don't have a good business model for monetizing them. A developer can sell an app but getting people to pay for accessing a webapp is tricky.
Keep in mind that a key advantage of webapps, easy deployment, has largely been met with seamless app stores. It's unclear what other advantage are there to webapps.
I'm not prepared to say which will win, maybe a mix of both will co-exist. But let's be realistic and look at what people are using and how apps are developed and paid for.
the lack of flash on iphone is probably responsible for more than 50% of the apps in apple istore - many of the apps sold are really quite trivial TBH and could just as easily have been written in flash; try visiting miniclip.com and seeing the quality and variety of the games and imagine if you could run them on your i-phone/pad/touch!
I used to be a mobile web devotee, but seesmic is changing that fast for blackberry.
IMO, the biggest obstacle to the mobile web is connection coverage and speed. Right now in the US, there are a lot of gaps and inconsistencies in 3G coverage. Until we have LTE/4G in "most" places (not just in the heart of the 25 most populous metro areas), the mobile web will lag behind native apps.
I believe that the story being told today by the data is the story of the future as well. A classic battle between technology for lowest common denominator and broad market appeal versus platform specific advanced capabilities for narrower, specialized application.
I think that it is a good thing to have both gain enough market share for people to be interested enough to continue their innovation in both arenas. We want the platform specific technologies to be able to take advantage of all the cool capabilities of their platform (aka games, entertainment) without sacrifice in order to drag along the other less capable platforms. At the same time, we also need a unified, sophisticated and capable technology like HTML5 to be used across the board (social, shopping, etc.) in support of common applications without having to build device specific versions.
Once again, the market has found its way to efficiency and it will continue into the future.
I'd like to suggest a site, TechCofounder.com, which is an online directory of developers and engineers who are interested in starting a new company or working on side projects.
Nice analysis but I think they miss a major point. Figure 3 clearly shows that data intesive services rely heavily on Apps instead of Mobile Web. With the limited transfer speed of mobile broadband this is an absolute necessity. Mobile Web just does not present a viable option for these services.
I 100% agree. It depends on the type of app your building - games will be app store based - but most mobile apps will be web apps. It's too costly to develop and maintain separate apps for each store when you can create one mobile web app that's supported across all platforms. There's a place for platform specific apps but it's a small percentage of applications.
I am not surprised that the browser will win, but I think most people don't understand the reason. People stop downloading apps after a certain point because they take up too much space on their browser. I have about 50 apps on my iPhone and that is already way too many... I can't even find the ones I am looking for. I stopped adding new ones about 6 months ago.
Web = free. Apps = purchased. As a content producer, I'm selling stuff: information, functionality, convenience. Browser-based apps let content be free. Apps let content be sold.
That's how it should be -- it's the logical path to take.
We don't need unnecessary fragmentation. Facebook app for iPhone, another one for Android, another one for Symbian, etc. This is ridiculous. The PC world tries to move away from this as much as possible, so why is the mobile world going backward?! Granted, some apps are better suited to be native but lots of them (some high profile ones, in fact) shouldn't be. Realtime interaction/notification? Last I checked, my desktop web browser can do that (e.g. web-based IM, Facebook). So, unless it was (intentionally) crippled, your mobile web browser should be able to do that too.
Well, let's try to foresee the future... How many different devices with Internet access do you expect? Lots of. Now we have desktop computers, notebooks, mobile phones, PDAs, TV sets, gamepads. How modern operating system will look like? It will be a browser based OS. Why? Because browser-based techniques don't depend on the hardware type. For example, new Palm webOS supports web technologies inside its core. Nice farsight, huh? Browser isn't just an application. It's a platform which supports XHTML, CSS, JavaScript. Do you remember Java? Why it is so popular on different OS? Because it works similar on any platform. That's why browser-based solutions will win. And all this due to the fact that it will work everywhere, on any device. This is a tendency. Nevertheless, there are cases when hardware oriented programming is still required.
And, of course, web development is much cheaper than application development.
See our touchscreen mobile website http://www.mobilizetoday.com Nowadays, websites should be more accessible for mobile phones to reach mobile users.
Seriously weak report, inasmuch as all of the data TODAY points in one direction - native. Will tomorrow change that? Maybe, but there's not any SUBSTANTIVE proxy for reaching the conclusion that the browser will win.
As a relative proxy, we know where Apple is pointing - native, and we also know that in the whole time that iPhone has been out, that no game-changing sites/services have popped up which are wholly web-based (or mostly so) targeting the 75M installed base of iPhones and iPod Touches. That's not because Apple has blocked it; quite the contrary. The market (to date) on developer and consumer side has spoken.
Similarly, while we know Google's mantra that what is good for the web is good Google, I believe the core Android apps that they've built are native apps, no?
Again, my only point is that I or anyone knows the end-game, but that these type of "reach a conclusion," "find some adjacent data" and "connect the dots" reports are meaningless.
A more reasoned approach would be to look at the data of the key players and their bets, map it to where usage and consumption is occurring and come up with scenarios of how these markets might evolve, putting forth a thesis about which approach is the highest probability bet.
That's a little more honest of an approach to analysis, in my opinion.
(sorry for the rant.) :-)
Mark
I agree. The mobile phone will be similar to the PC where processing and functionality intensive programs will be applciations and light-weight applications will be web-based.
Yes, it is easier to develop a website than an application, even if you go the extra mile and make a mobile version of the site in addition to the desktop version.
However, user testing of people attempting tasks on their mobile devices shows that the apps have much higher usability than the websites. (See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html)
Thus, it is likely that the most important use cases for mobile business will be fulfilled by apps, with less important ones relegated to less-usable sites, where users will fail more often and thus use less.
Of course, it's also important to remember that the majority of websites support tasks that are not well suited for mobile use in the first place. Such sites shouldn't even made a mobile version, and those few users who do want to access them from a phone will have to suffer the truly miserable experience of a desktop site repurposed onto a tiny screen.
Agreed 100%. There will be convergence of web & mobile. Apps will be agnostic. Apps will auto-detect and adjust.
It's not only Browsers Vs Apps, its Browsers Vs OS too.
While most of the people guessed it right who wins the first battle, the second one is the most debatable. I'm specifically talking about the 'web' and the OS Google is designing.
Go ahead, Browsers will rule.
There are many reasons why I believe browser-based is the way forward, even though apps are currently the flavour of the month.
It makes sense for both end-users and small startups alike who both want to see rapid innovation available to all users.
I've written a blog post about it here:
http://blog.psonar.com/2010/03/19/theres-no-app-for-that-2/
Enjoy.
Richard,
CTO Psonar Limited
Unless there is a need for device specific feature (like camera, GPS etc.,), the need for a native application is not justified, esp. for the enterprise.
The cost for building & maintaining native apps for many platforms (and versions thereof) is prohibitive and very hard to justify ROI. If the required features can be delivered by a Web app, it should be the first choice.
Check my thoughts around this topic at www.gmanju.com (my blog)
Wep apps do need to be tweaked to support various mobile browsers but by coding to web standards and using a mobile JavaScript library with multi browser support makes it much more manageable than porting an app to dozens of mobile OSs and runtime environments.