Native Mobile is Dead
Why Progressive Web Apps deliver for companies and customers
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs stood on stage and changed the world. Of course, as with many such moments, nobody really understood the revolution to come.
People today have long forgotten that between June 29, 2007 when the first iPhone shipped and July 10, 2008 there was no App Store. You see, the real innovation in 2007 was, “The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone,” as Jobs told the WWDC audience. He even went on to say, “And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need!”
The original vision for mobile internet engagement was rich, responsive websites rendered by a fully functional browser.
Today that vision is roaring back in the form of the Progressive Web Application. What does this mean for the consumer and your business?
A Consumer Point of View
Apple and Google have convinced consumers that they need to have natively installed applications. What are their motivations? Given that the App store generates $15 billion of annual revenue, it is clear that an app ecosystem is a competitive barrier. Indeed, even Microsoft cannot crack the mobile space because they cannot build an ecosystem of applications fast enough to be relevant. Remember Blackberry … not so much these days.
You, the app consumer, are getting ripped off.
Security & Privacy
Let’s be clear that this is not a tinfoil hat moment. Apple and Google are experts in application security. They have expansive teams of seasoned professionals dedicated to ensuring the Safari and Chrome browsers are free from bugs that would allow for nefarious actions on the part of a website you may visit.
Contrast this with a typical app developed in a typical mobile studio where there are no security experts. It is by far the wiser move to count on Apple’s and Google’s massive security teams with your physical device. Any breach is a hit to their reputation and stock price.
Contrast that with relying on every individual app developer to do that for their app. Indeed, app developers have no financial incentive to do so.
As we seem to learn weekly, many violate your privacy by selling data to Facebook. This is how they provide valuable services (the app) for free. As a consumer, you pay in privacy.
It stands to reason that web applications are inherently more secure because they run within a browser made secure by motivated experts.
Pricing
If you pay for an app or subscribe to a service through the app, Apple and Google charge the developer 30% of the sale. Apple is proposing to charge publishers 50% of their revenue to be part of its new Premium News Service.
If you are paying for a service, why would you pay for an Apple phone, then pay Apple for other people’s work? The duopoly created by the App and Play Stores stifles innovation and raises prices. This is basic economics.
Mobile app development is tedious and expensive. Maintaining web, iOS and Android versions of the same application is expensive. Make no mistake, in the end, all costs are passed on to the consumer in terms of both dollars and privacy.
Innovation
Apple and Google have convinced consumers they want an app store because that is what is good for Apple and Google. Consider Victory Client Avatar Nutrition. It’s a small company of 10 folks.
They have a choice to make: Serve their customers with an amazing service that makes a true difference in their lives, or build three different applications that do the same thing and give ⅓ of their revenue to a multibillion dollar organization that provides little to no value in return to you, the consumer.
Avatar Nutrition made a brave choice. It decided to sunset its current native applications and focus its limited resources on a delightful, mobile optimized web experience for its customers. They’re delivering 200% more feature velocity with 40% of the staff. Consumers see the benefit in new features and benefits arriving to their phones far more rapidly because this small company need only focus on a single platform.
As a Consumer
We, at Victory and Avatar Nutrition are expert consumers of mobile technology. That is a fancy way of saying that, like you, we use mobile apps. The billions of dollars siphoned from companies creating value comes from our pockets. While we are all fans of both Apple and Google, we recognize this part of their business is ripe for disruption.
The Progressive Web App is coming. The Weather Channel, HEB Grocery Curbside Pickup, The Financial Times, Twitter, Starbucks, Uber, and even The Washington Post are huge brands with critical mobile presence. All have are moving towards a better form of delivery for you, the consumer.
Some will say, “It’s just an optimized mobile web site.” They are right. Native mobile is dead, welcome to Mobile 2.0, or maybe it’s Mobile 0.2 all over again.
Victory is a hypernetic solutions consultancy. What does that mean? We use cross-functional expertise to solve the big, complex problems businesses and organizations face. We like to bring in smart people like Boyd to help us do just that.
