Does it web tech really have lesser development time? My experience is definitely the other way around, and I probably have put more hours in on the web side. Web is unbeatable for things like responsive UIs, but when you want pixel based it's hard to beat the development speed of Visual Whatever or Qt Designer.
Well, at least that's what I read all the time. I couldn't confirm it, too, but I always thought that's just because I'm perfectly fine with Qt. QML is also pretty good for responsive UI.
Maybe these companies prefer the web stuff because most developers know it anyway.
I think its because so many devs are trying to move away from C++. Qt really is great and its sad to me because its a much better solution than these crappy browser apps.
Same in my experience. Often times (and yes, this is anecdotal), using a web framework for desktop - or mobile apps - greatly extends development time, when you take all of the littles thing that it takes to build a production-ready system into account.