Mobile web apps as an alternative to native mobile apps : The future of mobile web apps on the competitive marketplace
Kim Hellbom · Theseus (Ammattikorkeakoulujen) · 2013
Mobile applications developed with web technologies have been around for some time, but they have not yet been able to compete with native applications in form of consumer reach and user experience. Native applications have been the number one choice for con-sumers, mainly because of their powerful distribution channels and also because very few people actually know what a mobile web app is. In this thesis I will find out if mobile web apps will be able to compete with native appli-cations in the foreseeable future. I will compare native, web and hybrid mobile application solutions in form of customer reach, development cost, development speed and produc-tion environments. A hybrid solution called PhoneGap that enables mobile web app de-velopers to wrap their app in a native container and upload it to an app store will be com-pared to web and native solutions. This will not be a theoretical study. Research made for this thesis will be based on the experience I got while developing a mobile web app with the Phone- Gap framework. To gain an understanding on what consumers think of mobile web appli-cations, an interview will be conducted in the end of this thesis. Results from this study show that mobile web applications will have a chance of compet-ing with native mobile applications in the near future. Consumers are ready to start using web apps over native apps, as long as the user experience is good. A digital distribution platform is inevitable if mobile web applications are to have the same reach of customers as native applications. Finally I will summarize the results and present my conclusion and ideas for further study on the subject.