Why the Mobile Website vs. Mobile App Debate is OVER?

Posted by Udayan Banerjee on January 23, 2013 · 2 Comments 

If you are still asking the question should I build a mobile website or create an installable application for mobile…

…then you are asking the wrong question!

The Mobile Web vs. Mobile App debate is finally over.

It is no longer a question of either…or. Making your website mobile friendly is no longer an option – it is mandatory requirement.

More and more people are accessing the web from mobile phones and tablets. Share of Internet traffic from such devices has already reached double digit percentage and inching up…up…up. In next couple of years it is likely to overtake internet traffic from desktops and laptops. In fact, as per Mary Meeker (she is known as “queen of net”) then it has already happened in India!

I have picked these charts from her presentation at Stanford University. The full deck is available in Slide Share.

So, if you do not want to present a sub-optimal view of your website to half of your customers, you will have no choice but to redesign your website to make it mobile friendly. Many libraries are available to help to achieve this and here is a compilation of Mobile Website Development Libraries.

Some experts go so far as to recommend a “mobile first” approach where you design your website primarily for mobile devices and then think of extending it to desktops.

Therefore, your strategic decision revolves around the question about the need of building an installable application.

Udayan Banerjee on Google+

Related Article

• Taking Your Business Mobile: Mobile Website Or App?
• Why Launching A Mobile App Is Pointless
• Mobile’s browser usage share jumps 26 percent in three months

This topic of Mobile Web vs. Mobile App has been debated endlessly … so, you can find many … many … many links! I have just provided two of them instead of 2000.

Filed under Mobile · Tagged with Mary Meeker, Mobile App, Mobile Internet Traffic, Mobile Web, Native App