Profits, Dummy

Posted April 8, 2011 @ 1:10 pm

Since no one seems to be writing about what the obvious outcome of this so-called battle between HTML5 and native apps will be, I’m going to throw my prediction into the already crowded pundit space.

HTML5 will be great. It is great. But it’s not some write-once-run-anywhere solution. Users have already chimed in; they prefer native apps.¹ The only way to get them to like HTML5 apps as much as they like native apps will be to convince the people writing the OSs to treat HTML5 apps as first-class citizens, meaning that an HTML5 app isn’t some other thing wrapped in Safari.

And it ain’t gonna happen. Why? Profits, dummy. Apple and Google can’t charge people for using web apps written in HTML5. If iOS were to put web apps on equal footing with native apps, Apple would lose their 30% cut of App Store purchases. It’s simple economics.

But beyond that, there’s an issue of aesthetics. People want native apps to look like native apps, which means the software has to use the interface widgets that they’re accustomed to seeing. I’m not saying you couldn’t write an HTML5 app with a custom style sheet for iOS and Android that would swap out interface elements depending on the user agent, but that’s such a pain in the ass that most people won’t do it.

Native apps make users happy by providing a consistent experience, and they make Apple happy by providing money.

The future for the Web on mobile devices is simply this: the Web becomes infrastructure for services—pipes and wires—and native apps become the interfaces that sit on top of that infrastructure. It’s a continuation of what’s already happening, an evolution of the holy-shit-we-need-a-mobile-app-compatible-API mentality that so many service have adopted.

You can see the evidence of this in Instagram, a photo-sharing application that has no Web interface and is instead simply pipes and wires that enable an iPhone app.

Web browsers will continue to rule the desktop, and more of our traditional desktop software will be moved to the Web. But if you’re developing for mobile devices, you’d do well to start out with a solid API design first—which isn’t a bad practice anyway—and plan for a native app to sit on top of it.

And if I’m wrong, so what; you’ve still built an API on which you can build an HTML5 app.

Nota bene: I’m not an iOS or Android developer by trade; I’m a web developer. But I’m learning to write iOS software because the future seems pretty clear if you aren’t wearing blinders.

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