To quote the phonegap devs:

http://phonegap.com/2012/05/09/phonegap-beliefs-goals-and-ph...

> The ultimate purpose of PhoneGap is to cease to exist.

You took it out of context totally. Here is the explanation they give:

"Our second goal is not nihilistic but is rather a commitment to standardization of the web as a platform. We believe in a web open to everyone to participate however they will. No locked doors. No walls. The things we do with PhoneGap are directly influenced by the work we see at the W3C, WHATWG, and other research such as Mozilla's WebAPI, BONDI, WAC, Webinos, webOS, Tizen and the like."

PhoneGap is about marketing, not about software. For customers it's difficult to find a specific website, but it's easier to find an app in the app store. The devs are still web guys, but thought they will sell more if it looks like a "real app".

I disagree. I used PhoneGap to develop my cloud-storage app so that I don't have to develop the App for 4 different platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, BlackBerry). I believe most devs use PhoneGap to develop real apps, not just to pack their existing websites into native apps.

This makes sense, thank you for the insight :) Wouldn't it have worked as a normal website? Does PhoneGap offer access to native APIs that are not available from web?

It sure does. You can access local storage, camera, GPS, accelerometers... just name it.