[MoosePlissken]

Depends on your definition of inferior. I can count the number of desktop apps that I use on a daily basis on one hand, and they're all development tools. I have more than twice that number of pinned tabs in my browser that are open at all times.

[Iftheshoefits]

Are those pinned tabs all running applications or merely displaying information (websites)? Are you sure the ones running apps would not run better were they written as a native/desktop version? Are the apps trivial (e.g. to-do lists)? There's a lot of context you left out.

[MoosePlissken]

Some are just websites, but I would say many of them are full blown apps:

Gmail - email client

Mog - Music player

Google Voice / MightyText - Messaging

TweetDeck - Twitter client

Confluence - Team wiki

Trello - Organizational tool

Toggl - Time tracking

Bitbucket/Github (I suppose you could debate that these are just websites)

Google Drive - Document editing and storage

Would these run better as native apps? Probably, if you're just talking about raw performance. However, I frequently jump between OSX, Windows, and Linux machines. When I open Chrome on any of these devices I can pick up right where I left off. Could I say the same with a native app? Probably not. For me, the performance of the web version of these apps is good enough, so cross platform compatibility becomes more important than raw power. That's what I meant when I said it depends on your definition of inferior.

I don't think mobile hardware or mobile browsers are quite there yet. But I don't see any reason why they won't eventually get to a point where they're "good enough" for people like myself, at which point other factors beyond raw performance will become more important.