HTML 5 or Native Mobile Development

The debate on web vs. native mobile development can keep founders and engineering teams up at night. When approaching a project that requires an experience on a smartphone, you have two choices. The first is a web app and the second is a native one. A web app is an HTML and CSS based experience that is tailored for a 3.5 inch screen. A native app is built using development kit like the iOS or Android SDK.

Both experience work on a mobile device, but what’s better? On the surface the answer is usually, go native if you want rich experiences and go mobile web if you want to reach more devices. But that’s not the right way to look at it. There are other factors you need to consider when deciding.

You need to look at the product you are building and consider these three questions:

Are you building for consumers?

If you are, then a native app is key. Creating a native app lets you place it in the App Store. This is the first marketplace consumers visit to discover and download apps. Top Charts and Featured lists make your app easier to discover.

For example, consumer sites like Facebook and Yelp have mobile sites, but they have a specific native app for key platforms like the iPhone.

If you are building a mobile game, then you should definitely aim native. Going native allows you to tap into the device hardware and use gaming social networks like Game Center, OpenFeint, and Plus+.

Are you building for businesses?

If you are building for businesses, you need to determine if your app is meant to reach everyone in the company or if it is supposed to serve a specific and structured purpose.

If you want it to reach everyone, then you have to accept the nature of businesses: they are multi-platform environments. Employees will have Blackberrys, iPhones, Androids, and Windows Phones. If you need to reach a wide range of people, then the mobile web is most obvious choice.

If your app serves a specific purpose within a business, then you should go native. Square is example of an app that serves a specific purpose, it replaces POS systems and credit card scanners.

How big is your team?

This tells you where to start. If you have a large team with 20+ developers, then you have enough resources to do anything you want. But if it’s a small team of 2 developers, then you need to start down the right path.

If you are building for consumers, you will always want to go native. Pick one platform and start there. As your product increases popularity, spread it to other platforms.

If you are building for businesses, try your best to start with mobile web. It lets you reach more employees within a company, it does not require an install to use it, and it lets you bypass the App Store. If a native solution is needed, you can use a framework like PhoneGap to give your web app a native shell.

With that, I’ll leave you with a good and related read: Coping with Over Four Hundred Devices: How Netflix Uses HTML5 to Deliver Amazing User Interfaces