Because of some unexpected and surprising changes in my life nowadays I wanted to write an article discussing differences between mobile web and native. This article will not give you which is better or not directly. You need to get rid of your laziness and come to conclusion on your own :) .
Let's agree on that : MOBILE IS FUTURE until better idea comes out! If you know how to play the game you can be future as well with your product with your team with your company. If you don't agree on that most probably this post is not something that will be interesting for you (chiki chiki bam bam :))
Let me start with Mobile Web. What is it really ? Okay it is not something eatable for sure (unfortunately). Mobile Web is something magical that saves lots of time and avoids waste of resources since in the end you will be able to have a product that is compatible(?) for all platforms. However, question is what "compatible" does mean here ! It is simple, compatible that works no matter how. Is it slow ? Buggy ? Well, wait a second, is it really user-friendly ?? Answer: "weelllll, let's not focus on details, it is solving our problems in short time. Why should we think about future if everything works fine just now(???) ? ". Welcome to the reality. Yes, its flexibility and affordability are attractive, but is there anything else which is good about it ? Well, I doubt there is no, at least NOW and what does flexibility mean here if you consider to do something with OS provided feature ?
Let's look from wider perspective and accept it, Mobile Web tries to emulate native and it is not succeeding it perfectly and it will never ever succeed too. Mobile Native communicates with operating system directly when Mobile Web communicates with operating system through browsers that makes your product slower. As you might understand there is always third party between your product and OS and you will have dependency on browsers. Meanwhile, emulating is something that leads bad UX and usage of lots of libraries that cost performance problem. In addition to all, Mobile Web has lack of offline storage security (no worries this time I will skip this important detail), and access to device hardware. It also has lack of usage of OS Api that comes with some cool OS features like push notifications, Apple&Android pay etc.
Are we done? Nope, soooo let's jump to Native. Unfortunately it is also not something eatable :). Native apps are the ones those are developed for a specific platform like Android, IOS, Windows etc and they are considered to be the highest quality apps in terms of performance and appearance. In addition to performance and appearance Native has access to OS Api that means your product can support all feature of the underlying platform some indicated above.
On the another hand, native apps can't be translated for each other which means you have to have an app for each platform. Creating multiple apps those have the same purpose is much more expensive than doing it with one in short time. And users might not want to download your app since they might need just-in-time interaction and some people also believe native will die in the end since it will get so complicated to manage so many apps for user in the future. These all has been being discussed for more than 4 years already. Result ? Users are not complaining about downloading native apps they are more complaining about performance of products either native or web. They are complaining about UX . They are complaining about if it is complicated to use your product or not.
To be honest I don't know how to give conclusion about this topic. There are lots of things to discuss about main weaknesses&strengths of mobile web and native. Security of Mobile Web might be even my next topic :). All in all, decision is up to you but just don't forget to consider the fact of that Mobile Web has lots of drawbacks with cost advantage while Native has only its cost as drawback with lots of undeniable advantages. I would like to think you will all do right things with your choices and world will become perfect with feasible cost and highest performance and appearance one day. And yes i hope birds will be singing in anyway :)
I appreciate your feedback about topic. If you think I am wrong about the information that I am sharing, you are all welcome to message me.
