HTML 5 Mobile Apps vs. Native Mobile Apps: The Case for HTML5

With the advent of HTML 5, native mobile apps are getting some stiff competition. Before, apps were easier to use and they generally have more functions than a mobile Web page. Now that HTML 5 is out, mobile Web pages have caught up with mobile apps.

HTML 5 has made it possible for Web designers to create more interactive pages that are simpler to code. This new standard has also taken away the need for plugins when displaying videos, playing music and rendering multimedia content. Mobile webpages using HTML 5 can now also allow for offline storage and geolocation functions.

The functional advantage of native mobile apps – apps that you get from the app stores and download to your smartphones – over mobile Web pages has already been erased.

What’s more, HTML 5 mobile apps would be inherently cross-platform. You do not need to create an iOS version of your app to go along with your Android app and Blackberry app and your Ovi Store app. This means that developers would spend less time and money in versioning their apps, and could channel their extra resources in coming up with improvements to their HTML 5 mobile apps.

Native apps are also much more difficult to market. With the burgeoning number of apps available in both the Apple App Store and the Android Market, a new app would be very difficult to position so that people would find them and then download them. In the case of Apple’s iOS apps, it is also getting more and more difficult to get accepted into the program. Just think about it. Would you spend months and months along with thousands of dollars for an app that would not even get accepted on the App Store?

More than this, big app stores tend to have poor cataloguing, which can also work against you.

Looking at it this way, it would seem that HTML 5 is the better alternative. But is it really?