At eFORCE Labs we explored mobile solutions for promotional marketing by devloping mobile apps on both web and native apps for Android, iphone and Blackberry. I have listed below some specific issues that we faced while developing these apps.
Native apps
- features like running applications in background are not available in all devices
As you all aware iphone does not allow running apps in the background which limits us to our apps in the background and receive notifications but in case of Android and Blackberry this is not an issue.
- local database such as SQLite is not supported in old devices
In case of using local database in our apps most of the platform supports SQLite but not in some of the old devices, for example Blackberry supports SQLite only above 9000 series instead they provide persistent store which made us to write separate data access layer in our apps.
- app approval process is slow and restrictions on usage of location API
In case of native apps most of the platforms has their own approval process and our apps has to abide their policies in order to be approved. There are some restrictions on using location API in some platforms like iphone.
Web apps
- regular web apps with appropriate form factor using HTML are not device/user friendly
We were able to design the regular html pages to display properly with respect to mobile form factor but there is not much option to make use of features like toolbar, touch screen controls etc.
- HTML5/CSS/JavaScript apps are device/user friendly but not supported by all browsers
We tried some mobile web development plugin's like jQTouch to design web applications with native animations, navigations and the output was similar to native app but not all mobile browsers supports HTML5. The default browser on blackberry does not support HTML5 and the pages were not rendered as intended.
If the app does not require core native API then web app is the best option because of easier distribution, faster release cycle, higher leverage on improving the base platform, decreased barrier to entry, etc.
Some reference to blogs related to this subject
The decline of the mobile software industry
Native Mobile Apps vs Mobile Web Apps