[gcl2]

You have to put yourself in the shoes of a normal iPhone user. Many users don't even know how to download apps and therefore never do.

The people who do know to download apps never imagine an "app" can be a "website". Therefore, they look to the "App store" as their first choice whenever they're searching for a solution to their problem (e.g. "oh, I need to know the latest news, let me search on the app store" or "oh, I want pictures of cute kittens, I wonder if they have those in the app store").

Which if you only have a web presence, you're never going to get discovered. That's why many app developers make native app wrappers over their HTML5 webapps - just to solve the discoverability problem.

[jlarocco]

Is this true? I thought web browsing was one of the primary features of smart phones. I thought it was taken for granted that the phones could browse the web.

Although your explanation does explain the huge number of companies creating stupid apps...