Little Love for the Mobile Web in App-Adoring World

April 11th, 2010 • mobile

Here’s an article written by Kunur Patel for AdAge which I recently participated in that speaks to the raging apps versus mobile web debate. Personally I’m in favor of a hybrid approach (for now atleast):

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The love affair between marketers and mobile apps is in full bloom, but the obsession with apps and the niche market they represent is coming at the expense of the mobile web, which is exponentially bigger and starving for brand dollars.

Nearly 20% of U.S. mobile subscribers used a downloaded app in January, according to ComScore, but that audience is spread across myriad devices; no one app can reach that entire population unless it is reformatted a number of times. Yet marketers are throwing their relatively tiny mobile budgets behind iPhone apps rather than mobile websites that have the potential to get in front of more consumers.

Consider: the largest app category, iPhone apps, at best only reaches 25% of smartphone users — a fast-growing segment that represented 42.7 million Americans in January, according to ComScore.

Compare that to nearly 30% of all mobile subscribers that used a phone’s web browser on any device accessing the internet, from iPhones and BlackBerrys to Android phones. What’s more, phones will overtake PCs as the most common device to access the internet worldwide by 2013, according to a study from information-technology research company Gartner.

So why are mobile sites taking a backseat to iPhone apps? Blame the Apple aura. Read More

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