I wish PWAs were more prolific. It feels like there should be sufficient incentive from both app publishers and users away from traditional app stores.
From the user's perspective, why download an app from the ad-riddled App or Play store, at least 10s of MB in size, rather than visit a website, and only if you like what you see, "install" the PWA (save it to the home screen)?
From the app development side, there are several disadvantages of publishing native apps:
- Requirement to share a large chunk of app-generated revenue with app stores
- Cost of development for an app that only works on 1 platform
- Regulatory requirements for listing in app stores, as well as keeping up to date with policy changes
- Lack of control / risk of having your app pulled at any time for non-compliance, whether intentional or not
So why aren't PWAs more popular?
- A lack of awareness? Many devs I've worked with had never heard of PWAs, whilst users are trained to use app stores from the moment they setup the phone
- A lack of a de facto "PWA app store", without which PWAs are scattered across the internet?
- Improved UX in native apps over PWAs, but surely this problem is solvable?
- Other?
From the user's perspective, why download an app from the ad-riddled App or Play store, at least 10s of MB in size, rather than visit a website, and only if you like what you see, "install" the PWA (save it to the home screen)?
From the app development side, there are several disadvantages of publishing native apps:
- Requirement to share a large chunk of app-generated revenue with app stores
- Cost of development for an app that only works on 1 platform
- Regulatory requirements for listing in app stores, as well as keeping up to date with policy changes
- Lack of control / risk of having your app pulled at any time for non-compliance, whether intentional or not
So why aren't PWAs more popular?
- A lack of awareness? Many devs I've worked with had never heard of PWAs, whilst users are trained to use app stores from the moment they setup the phone
- A lack of a de facto "PWA app store", without which PWAs are scattered across the internet?
- Improved UX in native apps over PWAs, but surely this problem is solvable?
- Other?