The most important question in a company's mobile strategy is whether to do anything special for mobile in the first place. For any enterprise that uses a website to build brand awareness and sell its products, the explosive growth in mobile devices is impossible to ignore. While many companies would love to extend their website to a mobile audience, they're uncertain about how to proceed. The most important question is: Should you produce a mobile website or develop special mobile applications?
Both of them, native applications and web applications have differences in their underlying technology and each approach has inherent advantages and drawbacks.
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Mobile Web Applications
The key advantage of mobile web applications over native mobile applications is cross-platform compatibility, allowing them to reach the broadest audience for the least effort. They’re relatively cheap, easy, and fast to build, although some device-specific customization is usually required. Mobile web browsers are fairly standardized, making it much easier to create a universal mobile web application than a native one).
Advantages:
- Web apps are also cheaper and easier to maintain than native apps
- Simple, ubiquitous access: users don’t have to download an application, but simply access a URL via their mobile browser which instantly delivers the most up-to-date application to their device. They can then bookmark the URL for repeat use.
Disadvantages:
- Mobile browsers have limited capabilities compared to traditional desktop browsers
- Depending on what platforms need to be supported, the solution may be limited to the lowest common denominator, giving the app a “clunky” look, or require time-consuming customization across browser versions
- Web apps generally cannot access the on-board hardware and software on a mobile device. Requirements such as camera control, direct GPS control, PIM integration, or control of the phone app will rule out web apps right away.
- Web apps generally require a connection to function, with performance issues if the website is slow or unavailable.
Mobile Native Applications
Native apps have a major advantage over web apps—the ability to leverage device-specific hardware and software. This means that native apps can take advantage of the latest technology available on mobile devices and can integrate with on-board apps such as the calendar, contacts, and email. However, this is a double-edged sword: while mobile technology is wildly popular, it is also constantly changing and highly fragmented.
Advantages:
- A richer, more compelling user experience: Native apps can leverage the capabilities of the mobile device, including onboard hardware (such as GPS, camera, and graphics) and software (such as email, calendar, contacts, picture/ video gallery, file manager, and home screen widget areas).
- Ability to run offline: Since the application remains installed on the device from the original download, no internet connection is required.
- Native apps are “hot” right now. Users are continually combing app stores for the latest app they can’t live without, giving products there a higher likelihood of being discovered
- Native apps are also easier to monetize
Disadvantages:
- Content publishers have to share information about their subscribers with the app store
- For a native app to work across multiple devices, separate versions of the app are required.
- The fragmented nature of the mobile industry means that developing, testing, and porting apps for different environments costs money—particularly with maintenance and promotion costs. Cross-platform frameworks can make things easier, but time and cost remain a fact of life when developing for rich functionality on multiple mobile platforms
- Keeping the application up to date also means more work for the enterprise, requiring development, testing, and distribution for different platforms rather then simply updating a single website