Has the pendulum swung away from (native) mobile apps? 

Native mobile apps are dead. Well, except for games.

We’ve heard that chorus quite a bit lately. There are way too many devices coming out, way too fast, to keep up with native development on so many platforms, right?

Maybe not. We don’t think everything needs to be an app. But we don’t advise our clients to go to the other extreme and assume everything should be a web app or mobile website. There is a case for each, so how do we decide?

Web Apps are not a magic bullet

I can just build a web app and be done with it, right? After all, our team already knows HTML and CSS and Javascript.  So why bother learning these esoteric things like Objective C or download all those complicated bits of the Android SDK? Well, for one thing, a mobile web app is not just a very small website. The user’s expectations for experience are different. The user’s patience level is usually very different. Remember the user has come to you on her phone because she needs something now and she wants it in a summary format that she can read on a 3-4″ screen. Whether you code natively in Java or ObjC or choose HTML/CSS/Javascript, the hard work is still making an interface that is fluid, responsive, and easy to use. You didn’t just make your life easy by choosing HTML.

The next thing you’ll discover when you build your mobile web application is that mobile web browsers are wildly different. They don’t all support the same standards yet, and that may never happen. Advocates of the “web only” camp often show the hundreds of different mobile devices on a slide and then imply that somehow a bunch of HTML with CSS3 sprinkles will rule all. Have you tried this with a 2 year old Blackberry yet?

The truth is it is non-trivial to make a mobile website that supports all these different browsers. Or all of these different screen sizes. Or this broad range of capabilities. Even HTML5 doesn’t make these issues go away with a single tap. Whether you build a web app or a native app, you can be sure you will spend time on these issues either way.

This should not be your first decision

The first question you should be asking is what problem is this “app” solving? What do your users want out of this? What do you want out of this channel to your users? From that you’ll derive a set of objectives and requirements. And then from *that* you’ll derive a user experience that makes sense.

After you have figured out how your “app” should work, and what your performance thresholds are, then you may find that the best the way to build your “app” is using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. We’ve seen plenty of cases where that is the right answer and yields the most direct path to supporting users. However, there are times when your needs in interface, performance, availability, device integration, or usability just make more sense in native code. These things apply to more than just games. This is especially true in those cases where the vast majority of your users are on Android and Apple devices. A good design and development team can make a great app for both.

So, bottom line, don’t take the easy way out.  It won’t pay off.  Casting off native mobile apps just because building an web app is easier, doesn’t mean your end product will be better, or even good for that matter.  Know your purpose, your audience, and most importantly, know your team’s capabilities.  Design the app you need, but also be willing to work with external organizations to build the app the right way, whether thats a web or native mobile app.

I’ll be talking about these and many other mobile development strategies and pitfalls at Friday’s Government Web and New Media Conference breakout session:

Top Ten Mobile Pitfalls (and how to avoid them)

If you’re at the conference, I hope to see you there

- Firoze Lafeer