Why native apps have an edge over mobile Web

June 8, 2011

Jonathan Toland

By Jonathan Toland

Nearly all the applications in the Apple AppStore, Android Marketplace and BlackBerry App World are native applications, with 44 billion app downloads projected by 2016.

Native has particular strengths, as does mobile Web. 

Native apps work online and offline to deliver an experience using the best of both worlds: Web site – easy to distribute, easy to manage content; native – runs fast on the device, works offline, and takes advantage of all the device’s on-board capabilities. You can optimize a Web site, but you cannot “nativize” it.

Native mobile apps are self-contained.

Going native
Once installed on a smartphone or a tablet, they deliver exigent content far faster than a repurposed Web site.

Mobile Web is still Web, which requires a fixed Internet connection, and on its own cannot access the device’s UI, camera-scanner, GPS, accelerometer or local storage of data such as contacts, maps and material.

Native mobile apps are written for the best performance on each particular platform: iOS (Objective-C), Android (Java) and BlackBerry (Java).

Constant testing of apps in various browsers on various devices and ever-evolving operating systems is exacting, multi-disciplinary work.

Smartphones are always on, and capturing spontaneity is a concept worth considering.

Synchronization enables two-way communication to and from the app, and updated content from the server or the client is immediately available, empowering end-user input whenever their lightbulbs click on, providing information on the go and meaningful services based on personal interest and physical location.

Compare the immediacy of fund-raising from smartphones versus fund-raising from Web sites, or the speed of push notifications which prompt immediate action upon receipt – for example, registering an FDA drug warning, a change of conference venue, or soliciting an entire association’s membership to time ad hoc emails to Congress.

Generating certain actions via Web sites is passive in comparison and slow.

Web defeat
The Internet’s back at the hotel. Per Wired Magazine’s September frontpage article, “The Web is Dead,” the screen comes to you, you don’t have to go to the screen.”

With access to the device’s firmware, native is down-to-the-bone, straight-to-the-phone fast: fast to start, fast to access data, and fast to close. 

Mobile apps are must-have rather than me-too: conferences, conventions and trade shows that want to increase the convenience of show-going for attendees need to provide the best kind of mobile support, and native is critically important because the uncertain availability of WiFi, overloading of access points and cell towers, and diminished cell reception inside the most modern venues are all very real concerns.

If the network goes down, native mobile app users will not be inconvenienced because most of the relevant content they need has been pre-loaded onto the device – a good example of Forrester’s “curated computing” – and is available instantly.

If the network goes down, non-native, mobile Web apps will fail like AM radio in a tunnel.

In aggregate, attendees overstress the bandwidth, typically between sessions. 

This peak traffic spike can exceed the capacity of wireless access nodes, resulting in sub-par mobile Web performance during elevated usage – at a time when people need information quickly.

If the Web site cannot sustain and fulfill the increasing requests per second, it is spinning dinner plates.

Jonathan Toland is sales and marketing account executive at CrowdCompass, Portland, OR. Reach him at .

Comments on "Why native apps have an edge over mobile Web"

1. Geoffrey Radcliffe says:

   June 8, 2011 at 12:22pm

   Great, article - as a developer of native and WAP (web based) applications for iOS, Android and Blackberry we are often asked to explain the difference on a regular basis.
   
   I wrote this quick cheat sheet explaining the difference that might help expand on the article.
   
   http://www.rastermedia.com/what-we-do/las-vegas-iphone-application-developers/yourmobilesolutions/
   
   Thank you for again for the great article. I'll go ahead and syndicate.

2. Steve Bennett says:

   June 8, 2011 at 9:15am

   The premise is that the app comes to you, but in truth, if you don't go out and find the app (and with so many out there that is not an easy task) it will never come to you.
   The user experience that is most realistic is that you are mobile and hunting for something that instant. Mobile web meets that criteria well. There is a place for both, but it is more case specific.
   The logic here is flawed.

3. Douglas McDonald says:

   June 8, 2011 at 9:10am

   It's not a competition. You need both for different activities. E.g. Apps won't work as a destination from offline media and, seeing as that is the biggest opportunity in integrating mobile into marketing, that is an an issue.