As an app developer:

- you may have an easy revenue opportunity with a downloadable app

- you may reach new customers through the app store mechanisms

- you may be able to provide a useful offline experience

As a user:

- for a daily use app, it may be more convenient to launch from the phone app mechanisms instead of a browser favorites list

In general:

- providing more routes to access your application is good. Let users use the one they like best.

Yes, I'm aware of the iOS function to save an app bookmark to the home screen. I've never met a non-developer iOS user who has used it.

Market share. Target non-website customers into customers via an app marketplace.

If it's seamless, why not?

For customer acquisition, your chances of engagement with a new user are ~50x higher on mobile web than an app.

You don't pick one or the other. The original iPhone only supported mobile web, and now it has apps, and they've been pretty successful, so I don't think it's worth arguing against that anymore.

I wanted to jump in here and share our perspective. I'm the project owner for manifoldJS. In a nut shell, you shouldn't always convert your website into an app. Depending on who you are trying to reach, the web may be the only channel you need. My experience is that apps stores are reaching a different type of user, ones that web developers often want to reach as well. What we are trying to do is help web devs reach those users without loosing the essence of the web (real time generated, always up to date apps). Hosted apps are helping us close the gap. Again, this tool is not for every web app, and a poorly designed web app, will create a poorly designed store app every time.

Web apps as 'apps' are more convenient than using them from the browser. Also, you can submit the app on app stores.

I have never seen how downloading and somehow managing a separate 'app' for every destination I'm interested in visiting on the web is more convenient. I much prefer visiting those destinations using a single tool equipped with a range of mature and hyper-convenient favorites mechanisms.

I fully agree. However you must have noticed that plenty of people don't live like that. Apps for websites, or apps that closely approximate websites, are very popular. Wikipedia, Google Search, Amazon, bus and train timetables, city transit/route-planning... certain people simply seem to like an app for a specific function.

And I agree with you too. There is a place for apps. But it is annoying how every site these days seems to want you to download their app. No thanks, I am just browsing the web, I don't want to commit to a relationship yet !

Another benefit is content that is available offline, on the go. Without having to access internet, imagine your users could down all your content while on a flight? This is all assuming a website worth reading whether online or offline.

I don't believe thats within the capability of "hosted apps". This would be true of only hybrid (Cordova) & native apps.

There is the HTML5 Offline APIs for that. If you have an offline-capable web app, I think it should be possible for a tool like ManifoldJS to find out all of the assets it requires and package them into the app. Whether it actually does this, I don't know.

HTML5 Offline storage can be used without an app. Part of the issue is not the storage, but how to run the app in the background to pre-fetch the content. Here's a table showing the limited access that hosted apps have. Looks like they do have access to certain device storage APIs, as well as desktop notifications, microphone, etc. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Build/App_permissio... Here's another page comparing "packaged" to "hosted" apps which seems to imply they are mutually exclusive - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Marketplace/Options/Pack...

I don't find it convenient to download dozens of apps for services I rarely use.

Cool, then don't. Why does everybody think you can only have either a mobile website or an app? You can do both.

I literally cannot conceive how anyone could possibly think this. And that's not using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively".