The future of smart devices.
You can now build mobile websites that tap into device capabilities easier, faster and simpler than building a native app.
And, with a few exceptions, this was the only reason you’d choose the complexity and expense of building an app. Oh, and the snob factor – it’s ever so good to say you have an app.
In fact even if you have an app now, there is a good case to scrap it and build a web app. There are tens of thousands of frameworks, themes, plugins and functions all available just under the WordPress banner – and WordPress ain’t the only kid on the block either, you could use Drupal, Expression Engine, Bones or hundreds of others.
In recent years, companies have invested huge sums in developing native mobile apps – but sadly the reality is that many have had little success and are little more than “trophy apps” that suck up expensive development, maintenance and support budgets.
Building and maintaining native apps can be an expensive, especially when dealing with multiple platforms. So, despite better development tools and wider skillsets being available today, maintaining a first-rate app simply might not stack-up.
There are dozens of mobile platforms out there today, and the market continues to fragment and that might mean a hundred app updates for every development year. These frequent updates can present problems; submission and approval processes, compatibility and legacy support.
Finally, we’ve seen the rise of device-independent web frameworks that are specifically desgned to work on all hardware and software. We advocate the use of WordPress and you might be surprised by the number of major players who use the WordPress framework to deliver an “app-quality” experience using the web.
This is not a new discussion and will rumble one, we have covered this over 3 years ago, again 18 months ago and again a year ago with Responsive Design vs Mobile Apps.
