Are Apps a waste of money?

Lately, everyone seems to want mobile Apps, but are they worth it for your business?

Overall, I believe that Apps are a stop gap, temporary solution. Having to cater for both Android and iPhone, then expecting clients to pay to develop their solution on both devices needs to, and will eventually end.

In the future, I predict that the web will catch up to whatever the Apps will do, which will mean that developers can then simply develop once and it will then work for all devices.

But what about in the meantime?

The question you need to ask yourself is, “Is there anything we need, that an App can do, that a mobile website cannot?”

The biggest piece of functionality that falls into this category is usually notifications. However, more and more users are switching them off anyway, so unless there’s some fancy thing you want to do with the camera on the phone, or some special App like functionality you need to provide to your customers, the chances are, a mobile website will give you far more use and safe you a whole lot of money, instead of developing an App.

I found this article when I was seeing if anyone else had the same prediction for Apps. In the article, Andreessen, an Internet pioneer makes exactly the same prediction, then below it there are some reasons why others say he is incorrect. I don’t believe with the opposing reasons, as they are things that will be overcome as the web catches up with the functionality that mobile Apps can currently provide.

http://dailytekk.com/2012/07/30/are-mobile-apps-a-temporary-fad-experts-say-andreessen-is-wrong/

So the point is that if you are a small business looking to possibly invest in an App. Maybe you’d be best to bypass this temporary technology and head straight to the more cost effective future, we you can use your website to deliver the functionality on a mobile optimised interface.