About a year ago the Wired magazine had a fluorescent orange cover with big bold black letters claiming the web is dead. The cover article explained that surfing the web has declined the last few years. More and more people are using apps to consume content. I think we will see this flip back once more. Apps will be a thing of the past and the (mobile) web will rise aigan. Here is why:
1. Developers are sick of the Apple App store. Months of developing can go straight into the waste basket when Apple decides your app is not suitable for the App store. Also the subscription based fees Apple is pressing on publishers won’t help the popularity of the App store.
2. Fragmentation (a big problem with Android Apps). Not everyone Android phone has the system requirements to run the latest version of Android. Meaning older phones running older Android versions. This makes it hard for a developer to keep his app up to date for all the different versions.
3. New uses for existing technologies, such as HTML5 and Responsive webdesign, to create compelling online experiences. With these technologies it is easy to create a website which works on every device and screen size.
In the future we will see developers bypassing apps and app stores to create just one centralized web app which plays nice with all modern devices. This shift is already visible with Facebook creating it’s own web app platform, they don’t feel like bowing down to the App store overlords.
In the end the demise of the app will be a lot easier for the developer freeing up time to innovate instead of troubling with App store dictators or fiddling with backwards compatibility.