Did you hear? The native app is dying this year! No more iPhone marketplace! It seems like we are going back to where we started from with iPhone development – the web-apps. Yes – really! How you ask? Why? So quick? Well, yes. The second coming of HTML (or maybe 5th will be more appropriate
) will bring justice to those undeserving native apps! HTML 5 has come into play and is slowly gathering steam and is making people all over the world steam up with their predictions for the death of the native app. Some say – as early as end of 2010, we will be having apps mainly in HTML rather than device specific programming languages (native). Before I continue with this lengthy and condescending (to people that make those claims) joke and to end my introductory paragraph, let me say one thing.
No such thing is going to happen any time soon. Granted – for me – soon means within about two years, but two years is a damn long time and a damn enough time for new things to develop and start up in this darn age we live in. So the native app is definitely not dying this year. And please, before you tell me how it actually is – consider just a couple of thoughts on the matter.
First of all, if you are not sure what HTML5 is, let me explain it to you in one lengthy sentence (heavily wikipedia influenced): HTML5 is the next major revision of HTML that has been worked on since 2004 and aims to to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based rich Internet applications and introduce some new and wonderful mark-up. Since we all like the “.0″ in stuff, you can think of HTML5 as HTML 5.0
.
So we have this wonderful new and shiny HTML that will enable us to further the capabilities of web-apps. Also with the prolification of more and more APIs that will be able to access core device functions, we can do more and more things that native apps can do! This is great and while it will be a huge step for web-apps and will probably result into heavy growth of web-apps numbers, we are forgetting a few key factors that native apps still have in hand. Factors that will ensure that native apps don’t die… just yet…
First, we have the ability to take control of device capabilities and the sheer speed that we can do that with native apps. Native apps will simply be able to access much more of the device and do it a nice and unnoticeable way. Native apps will forever load faster, use the GPS faster, interact faster, and just be so damn faster than web-apps. Which leads me to the second and very important point.
We need quite some fast broadband access. Not your average AT&T 3G. We need serious speeds that can download content quicker to our devices so we can use the apps. Be it a button, an image, a core file, a script – it all needs speed in order for us not to sit and wait in front of our mobile device, wondering when the “search” button will respond to our clicks. As of now, unfortunately, we (the US) don’t really have that mobile access on a large scale. And honestly – the numbers of growth (or lack of it as in our case) that you can see in this Gizmodo article is kind of pessimistic (and making me tear up a bit). How come Romania, a country that stands far behind the US economically, have twice the broadband speeds of US, I don’t know… Speed though will be a big hurdle to jump over when it comes to replacing native with web…
Third, how many of you are familiar with HTML5 right now? How many do you think would have seamlessly transfered to it within 11 months? This is where the other hurdle stands in. HTML5 adoption is not as easy as everybody just taking a few days off work to read a guide and then setting off to create and transfer applications to HTML5 web format. It will take a bit before we can start seeing clean and nice code from a lot (underline that) of people, which could signal trouble for native.
So there you go! HTML5 will make it easier to go into apps and will help with bringing them to par with the “competition”, but will it really kill native? Not yet – that’s for sure. What will result from it might be much more web-apps that do stuff nicely, but all those nice and fast multi-functional apps will still be native. I mean – what would you really rather use? Facebook’s iPhone app or the mobile version of their site? Native will always be quicker and better/smoother. And then we are forgetting one more thing – why would you not want to transfer an app to the native domain if it is getting increasingly easy to do so? HTML5 can give you the great base to build your app upon, but to add the needed speed and functionality, you can always go native. Take a look at PhoneGap if you don’t trust me. The fight is still on…
Update 1/19/2010 as per SBF02:
One huge hurdle web-apps have in front of them before killing the native app would be games! I am not sure on the number, but I bet a lot of the apps in the iPhone appstore are actually games. Everybody that I know who has a mobile device has some sort of games on it. I don’t think that however HTML5 fares out, it will be able to compete with the capabilities native languages will offer app game developers! Granted, maybe we will see a shift where “basic” apps will transfer to the webosphere and native apps remain more and more game oriented, but once again – I don’t think this is happening any time in the recent future. Native and web offer their own distinct strengths and none can kill the other just yet…