Native Apps vs. Web Apps: Who’s Winning?

There has been a long debate about which approach to a mobile presence would be the more beneficial for the provider and the user alike. Some prefer to see their services and products released as native apps to be downloaded and installed on smartphones, while others would rather see them browser-based since it offers superior reach, and better scalability. As usual, it was up to the market to decide which approach will be more successful and apparently it has. According to Betcade the app-first is the winning strategy today. Let’s see some details, shall we?

Consumer preference

According to Betcade, the majority of the consumers prefer to use native apps as opposed to web apps. Mobile apps now represent over half of all the social media consumption across all devices, and users spend 90% of their smartphone time inside various apps. This is not good news for iGaming, a specific branch of the mobile entertainment industry, which is effectively banned from listing its apps in Google’s Play Store.

If you have an Android phone, you can join Red Flush mobile casino and claim your bonus using a mobile browser app only. The Red Flush is a company active in the iGaming (real money gaming) business, which means that it’s excluded from Google’s Play Store since 2013. Apple had a similar restriction applied to its App Store for years – but now it’s abolished, meaning that real money players can head over the App Store, download the Red Flush app, and play all they want (free or for real) on their iPhones and iPads. This is one of the reasons why the Red Flush, as well as other similar gaming operators, perform well on iOS devices, but poorly on Android – they can’t have a dedicated app.

Different levels of engagement

According to the latest statistics, smartphone users spend up to 18 times more time inside apps than on the mobile web. When it comes to shopping on the go, apps are, once again, better – users browse almost 300% more products inside an app than on a mobile-friendly website. And when it comes to purchasing decisions, apps seem to be the more trustworthy once again: users purchase up to three times more inside an app than outside it.

Web apps are cool, but…

Apps are built with two purposes: to serve customers with a product or a service, and to make money for the publisher. Although web apps are easier to scale and deploy, they seem unable to deliver the same metrics, the same level of engagement, and the same amount of conversions that providers are looking for. I think that it’s safe to pronounce at this point that the web app is dead – long live the native app!