[asdkl234890]

The web is your 3rd mobile OS.

Sure the developing world still needs very cheap phones, and they require software close to the hardware.

But in the developed world phones and tables get closer to a full PC every day. They basically are tiny PCs.

And exactly how the web made Windows and OSX, and Linux less interesting, so it will make the mobile OSs less interesting.

Because even if you can't get close to the hardware, and might require user permissions to access hardware features, still a java script and HTML5 based web app can do almost anything you want on mobile hardware. History keeps repeating itself.

[IkmoIkmo]

Yeah it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but two things seem true:

1) Native apps were better than web apps because of native performance was better.

And as you say, we're seeing smart phones become mini PCs. I'm actually typing this on a PC I built years ago on which I still play the latest football and strategy games, but my girlfriend's smartphone has 1 gigabyte more RAM (3gb Nexus), twice as many cores at a similar speed and a 50% higher resolution, for a quick anecdotal example. I know it's apples and oranges technically but smartphones are becoming insanely powerful. And with the web evolving (things like GPU driven CSS animations being commonplace now) the majority of non-game apps are going to run just fine on PC-like hardware on phones in the next years with no performance difference from native. And with WebGL becoming the standard, one can say the same for many games now, too.

2) Native always had more access to the hardware. Things like the contact list, photos, file system, social accounts etc.

Here too we're seeing the web evolve, but we're also seeing hybrid frameworks like Cordova or Ionic become very sophisticated which allow plugins to deal with native features using web technologies. Of course this hybrid app still goes through the app store in which Apple/Google are all powerful. But even on the web we're seeing tons of integrations for the core functionality like accessing the camera.

I think 1) will be a no-brainer, native won't be much better than web. 2) will see a difference for quite some time, but here the difference is shrinking, too. Things like the camera or geolocation have been possible for quite some time.

[jonathantm]

Javascript is the new operating system... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzyoT4DziQ4#t=1043

My wife uses her iPad for one thing. The browser.

Needless to say I am very interested in the Firefox phone.

[amirmc]

That's not the way the current evidence is pointing. People do like apps and so far the pendulum doesn't seem to be swinging back to the web.

See slides 11 & 30 at http://a16z.com/2014/10/28/mobile-is-eating-the-world/

[bobajeff]

What that says to me is that people love and spend most their time on mobile devices. And that they use Apps mostly to access their websites.

I don't think that means they "love" mobile apps. It's just that on mobile, web browsing is an inferior experience. Take a look at this data on the top apps: http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Data-Mine/Top-25-Mobile-App...

Personally, I'd rather use the complete websites than mobile sites or apps. I'd also like to have better choices when it comes to mobile browsers (more on this later). I'd also like to have better tab management on mobile.

Browser choice on Android seems to be Chrome, Firefox and Webviews. Firefox never ran well on my phone and for some reason or another doesn't render sites properly. Webviews based browsers also don't render sites properly and they are lacking support for some web technologies.

Chrome is the only properly working browser on my phone and it always has me logged into Google sites and resumes from my previous session. Every time I use it I feel like I'm naked in a public place. And, every site has to be a longterm commitment as there is no easy way to close multiple tabs.

TLDR:

I use apps mostly because mobile browsing still sucks. I bet I'm not alone with this.

[rokhayakebe]

People do like apps

I do not agree entirely.

Do you people like apps? Or do people like these bookmarks* to things they can get to easily? May even be a web app for all they care, can they just click and get to it.

[morenoh149]

it's more nuanced than that. The web is now also reponsive websites. I'm bullish on mobile mostly due to that very presentation. I'm counting the web under mobile.

[amirmc]

The graph on slide 11 is pretty clear that the trend is for more time being spent in mobile apps than on the web. Unless you want to take issue with the data, there isn't much nuance there.

To whoever downvoted my earlier comment (if it wasn't the parent), please explain why. I don't have a strong opinion on app vs web so I'm keen to see data.