Progressive Web Apps: A Threat or a New Opportunity?

dzone.com/articles/progressive-web-apps-a-threat-or-a-new-opportunity

29/12/2016

Progressive web apps are web apps that use the latest web standards to deliver a native-like user experience. They
combine what we love most about the web and what we love about native apps. No installation is required, loading
time is quite short and the app is accessible from an icon on the home screen.

What's So Good About Progressive Web Apps?

Progressive web apps combine a native user experience with the advantages of the web apps:

Discoverability: In fact, progressive web apps are the websites themselves, thus they are indexed by search
engines.
Easy updating: New content and updates of your progressive web app will be downloaded instantly when
you launch it.
Security: Since every network request will be processed by service workers, progressive web apps should
be hosted over HTTPS to prevent security issues.
Oine work: Unlike ordinary internet links, you will be able to launch a progressive web app from your
smartphone even without internet connection.
User experience: Progressive web apps oer a native-like experience and performance with minimal page
refreshes. In addition, just like native apps, they can be added to the home screen.
Responsive design: A progressive web app will run smoothly on a smartphone, tablet and desktop as well.
Linkable: Progressive web apps can be shared like any other link to a website.

Lets dive a bit further into the details of Progressive Web Apps.

Preconditions for the Emergence of Progressive Web Apps

The mobile app boom, which began with the emergence of iPhone and Android, is currently subsiding. An average
user has formed a certain set of apps for their day-to-day use: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat,
Instagram, Spotify, and a mobile browser which serves as a sort of one size ts all solution from checking email to
reading the news. The rest is just not necessary.

People dont want to install any more apps, they are satised with what they already have.

A couple dozen of the most popular and well-established apps absolutely dominate the mobile app space. They
have a very tight squeeze of the app market. They collect the majority of the revenue and dont easily give way to
others why are also trying to get a piece of the pie.

As this chart from Statista shows, in 2016 half of the smartphone users in the United States didnt install any new
apps, 13% installed only one app per month:

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App loyalty is also suering. The average retention rate for mobile applications is only 25% after 90 days, which
means that 75% of the people who download an app end up deleting it. What does this mean? Is the era of mobile
apps over?

Are there other ways to engage customers without the hassle and expense of developing a native application and
submitting it to the app store that is already lled to the brim with more than 2 million apps? Are there any
technological alternatives to mobile apps that wont annoy people with downloading and installation? Lets nd out.

The Era of Mobile Applications

The launch of the iPhone in 2007 created a frenzy not only in the consumer sector but also in the manufacturing
sector (Nokia lost its market share while Samsung gained a big slice of it). Apple had changed the paradigm of
interaction between the user and their smartphone.

A small device became not just a means of communication with the outside world, but also something very personal.
Todays smartphone owners largely identify themselves with their devices. Its hard to imagine a modern man
without a smartphone. Technological innovations have signicantly improved our lives: now it is much easier to get a
sense of direction and orient oneself to the surrounding terrain thanks to Google Maps, keep in touch with loved
ones via WhatsApp, nd entertainment with funny YouTube videos, etc.

The advent of smartphones temporarily halted the rapid development of web technologies. The era of mobile apps
and their marketplaces began, thus starting a full-scale war for customers between device manufacturers. Some of
them have fallen (Goodbye Nokia), some emerged as victors (Long live Samsung). But platform vendors, in this
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case, Apple and Google, have beneted the most. Web applications could not compete with mobile apps which
provided better usability, more features, and the best overall mobile experience.

At the beginning everyone was happy. Mobile data trac was growing rapidly and technology experts proudly
declared the imminent demise of the Web. Due to competition and a wide range of mobile devices, prices decreased
signicantly and even in developing countries most people could aord their own handsets.

For example, in Indonesia, with a population of 260 million people, it is projected that by 2018 there will be more
than 100 million smartphone users. Already, most Internet users (80 million) in this country access the Internet via
mobile devices.

Everything seemed to be going ne, but building mobile apps became harder and harder each time because of:

1. Mobile device fragmentation. In the sphere of Android devices, theres complete chaos. Manufacturers oer
a whole range of devices, from small to large and from cheap to agship, stued with advanced hardware and
software. Until recently Apple had a strict policy in relation to its devices: fragmentation was much lower and
iOS itself was closed. Developing for iOS was less painful than for Android. But the market dictates the rules,
and to get the maximum prot its necessary to be exible. Now Apple releases devices for almost all sectors
of the population.
2. Multiple operating systems. In todays world Android holds a leading position among the mobile operating
systems, followed by iOS, Windows Mobile, and others. From a business perspective, a product must be
present on at least two of the above-mentioned platforms. This, in turn, carries certain costs for the
development and support of both platforms.
3. The relevance of information. Never before have we been confronted with so much information as in these
days. Information is meaningless if it is not relevant. Competition is growing with every new day and it is
essential to deliver a new product into the market and into the customers hands as soon, and as early as
possible. From the viewpoint of a producer, the internet is nothing more than a cheap and eective means of
delivering products and services to the end user. In this context, mobile apps are not the best means for
disseminating information because of:

application development and maintenance takes a lot of time

deployment delays due to marketplace approvals
device fragmentation increases the occurrence of errors and non-standard behaviors on various
devices
customers are reluctant to update applications

Cross-platform Alternative

If there wasnt need for multiple platform support, such tools as Electron, React Native, or Angular Mobile
Toolkit wouldnt have gained recognition and become widespread. It is not dicult for a good front-end developer to
write a cross-platform mobile application that would run on all major platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS)
like a native app.

However, cross-platform apps could not compete with native apps due to their slow performance and limited access
to the phones native APIs. In addition, they do not solve the problem of the oversaturated mobile apps market since
they also have to be downloaded and installed just like their native companions.

The Wind of Change: Going for Progressive Standards

Time does not stand still. Web technologies become more and more mature oering innumerable capabilities for
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developing complex web applications which are in no way inferior to mobile apps.

For example, a modern web application like Google Docs by no aspects concedes to its desktop
counterpart Microsoft Word, and this is just the beginning. Web app development is starting to push desktop
applications into the abyss and it seems that in the near future we will only need a browser.

In 2015 Google introduced a new model for building web applications called Progressive Web Apps. It combines the
best of web and mobile applications and takes advantage of the latest browser capabilities.

A progressive web app can be described as a hybrid between a web page and a mobile application. Actually the
term Progressive Web Apps is just a buzzword. At its core they arent any dierent from ordinary web applications,
they are made of HTML, CSS and Javascript and live in the browser but oer more capabilities and more access
to the underlying operating system and hardware (more access to the phones native APIs).

Just like a native app, a PWA can be added to the home screen with a custom icon. A native app may be
incompatible with some devices, because the OS, hardware or rmware may not be supported, which is not the
case for PWAs.

The reason why they are called progressive is because they will work regardless of the technical environment and
will only be implemented if its available on the device without damaging or sacricing the content. Theres nothing
new about it, progressive enhancement has already been implemented in web apps for years now.

But they shouldnt be confused with the aforementioned cross-platform mobile applications made with such tools
like Cordova, React Native or Electron. All these technologies wrap the source code (HTML, CSS, and Javascript)
into executable les (.apk, .exe) which then have to be downloaded and installed.

The main idea behind PWAs and what makes them really stand out from all the aforementioned technologies is
that PWAs dont require installation. To be able to use a PWA all you need to do is to visit its webpage and save it
to the home screen. Thats it. All the source code and resources will be cached locally (saved in local storage)
allowing the PWA to work oine.

Service Workers

The main workhorse that powers a PWA and allows it to function even if theres no internet connection is a new
technology called Service Workers. Once cached, a PWA will always load from the local storage. If theres new
content available or any new versions of the app, the service worker will automatically update it behind the scenes
next time you connect to the Internet.

Another cool thing worth mentioning is that PWAs can send push notications, a privilege which only native apps
could use until recently.

Heres just a small subset of the capabilities already available in PWAs (besides those mentioned above):

access to hardware features such as webcam, microphone, Bluetooth, battery status, accelerometer,
gyroscope, compass and a whole bunch of sensors (ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, etc)
search engine indexing
full-screen mode
access to the le system
ability to add an icon to the home screen
clipboard access

hardware-accelerated 3D graphics using WebGL 4/5

 hardware-accelerated 3D graphics using WebGL
PWAs can be easily shared via URL

Safari is a little behind in implementing progressive web apps, namely their core feature Service Workers, but its
only a matter of time before it will catch up with other browsers. All of the other new web APIs listed above, including
push notications, are available.

To learn more about PWAs and their capabilities visit the Google Developers website.

What This Means for Tomorrow's Startups

Again Google is ahead of the curve with its Progressive Web Apps. We can foresee huge demand for PWAs in the
near future and they will certainly revive web application development. PWAs eliminate the need to download and
install something onto your mobile device, which became a stumbling block during the proliferation of mobile
applications. PWAs can do the job for most use cases and can also be a much better investment .Theres no need
to develop and maintain three separate code bases for Android, iOS, and Web. Theres no need to compete for
attention in app stores. You can use good old SEO techniques to attract visitors and convert them into customers.

Does this mean that native apps are doomed? Not necessarily. There are still specic use cases where there is
no alternative to native apps. Pursuing both strategies still remains the best option, at least for the time being. A win-
win strategy would be building: PWA + iOS app since Apple doesnt provide full support for Progressive web apps
yet. Native apps that havent received widespread recognition on marketplaces could be rewritten as PWAs to get a
second breath.

Published at DZone with permission of Valeriia Timokhina, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

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