Web Apps and HTML5 Take a Hit
Sad news for the mobile web world, Wooga, a major social game developer, is abandoning its HTML5 efforts in favor of native apps. Wooga has been experimenting with HTML5 for the past six months, but with poor discovery numbers and even more dismal retention rates the company says it will continue focusing on native apps for the time being. From AllThingsD:
As the fourth-largest game developer on the social network, Wooga was chosen to be one of the first partners to develop a game using HTML5, which would enable users to play games on Facebook through either a browser or a mobile device. However, the company has told AllThingsD that it is planning to announce today that the experiment has been largely unsuccessful, and that it will no longer make games in HTML5. …
Over the past few months, Wooga assigned as many as 10 employees to the game, but there were still too many issues remaining. “The mobile app market is a billion-dollar business that HTML5 could significantly disrupt. It has the potential to be a complete game changer, but the technology is not there yet,” Moeser added.
After Wooga launched Magic Land Island in October [it's HTML5-based app available via Facebook], it was played a total of 1.3 million times and experienced a retention rate of only 5 percent. For comparison, Wooga said that Diamond Dash, on Apple’s iOS, was downloaded more than 18 million times, and had a 50 percent retention rate during the same time period. …
Wooga said it had encountered a number of problems with the technology, including long initial load times, lack of sound and reliance on Internet connection. Additionally, when the game first launched, there was no icon for it, so once players left Facebook they were often confused as to how to get back in and play.
Read the full article at AllThingsD >>>
An interesting solution for the icon problem could be a hybrid app that gives users the familiarity of an icon but connects them directly to the web app. Hybrid apps might be a simple way to ease users into the coming web app revolution. But if Wooga’s actions are any indication, HTML5 and web apps have a long way to go before overtaking native apps.
Does this development change your opinion on the native app v. web app battle?
No it simply echos technology variance over time in a sea of perception. Even those with skin in the game are apt (app) to find their pre-dic-tions cut off. Were they, for instance, attempting to push a elephant down a straw? Or, as wars have often failed, were they attempting to fight the current whirlwind with the previous strategy? One company’s money throw (usually) does not define the weather in the field albeit casino or technology – just because the thrower loss. However, it is a further insight.
See my earlier post:
The “weather” of any such prognostication might best be informed by the temperature and winds of the ever variant ecology better known together as technology, economy, politicology, probability and community (users , providers and stakeholders) – no matter how distant, remote from the predictor. Does the current article map all these – historically, currently and potentially? Are you willing to accept less or demand more? Is a sufficient weather gradient (sunny, partly sunny, cloudy, partly, cloudy, light rain, heavy …) enough granularity on a measurable scale (quantitative degrees as opposed to qualitative descriptions) availed or only absolutes (rain)? Is plausibility for the unexpected accounted – that is, is the factual scope limited (only a local experience as opposed to a global history)? To mix analogies, is the article playing with enough cards out of the deck of weather? Do they know the game? Given a hand of 2 cards (native and web) and no chance to pick another from the deck or blending their value as a hand (a suit or accumulation), accessing the value of the cards individually and throwing out one to make a bet might not be the game the way it will be played by rules not yet known. The weather was once forecast for the Navigator or the Explorer. And, then, what came on the horizon – already known on certain islands, to some remote to others charted? Did someone yell Yahoo at AltaVista and then got Google in a storm? Oh, how “micro” climates can grow “soft”. Beware of trendy information. Fortune tellers are limited by their person and the deck.
That said, one can admire much in the opposing articles: A) the pro-web article vs B) the pro-native article.
Are the largest number of mobile devices the upper end or the lower end? (Lower end.) Are such devices accessing iPhone content (apps, etc.) or web content? (non-iPhone) Are most mobile device users (particularly cellphone users in the USA) also home broadband users? (No.) Are most cellphone users in: USSR? (No.) USA? (No.) Europe? (No.) India? (No.) China? (Yes!). However, oddly (perhaps), there are more cellphones in use in the USA than there are people in the USA census (3% more phones than people, that is, 103%)! For Arabian countries (say, the UAE it’s 197%), cellphones out number the population by even more (almost double) compared to cellphones out numbering the population in the USA.
Does either article (A or B) grasp the weather globally? From the few snapshots I see, I see mostly localized snapshots, each a narrow region of fish-eyed space-time. However, I am no expert on the weather, vision (visionaries) or cards per se. Yet, I know there are millions of minds at work in the technical space though we wake up to a world – almost always – apparently 99% * x (where x is say plus or minus y insanity) as it was yesterday. Amazing how many (deprecated or not) technologies still remain on the earth! Despite VoIP you see tweeter, tweeter, tweeter still abuzz in the weather of the breeze.
The evolutionary course, random as it is, finds echo in the A author’s phrase “they just head toward the best content and utilities” – where I would add “connections (whether social or otherwise) and resource I/O”. Twitter capitalized on social weather in politicology and more broadly sociology. A consideration for resource I/O for instance is battery drain per united of perceived added value (the cost to process a local data store as opposed to search facilitates on a cloud) and trade-offs such as speed over time or thoroughness. An advance in battery life tips the equation one way and an increase in outer data store capabilities or size tips the equation in another way where each tip is offset by the users’ perceived need/experience. The “now” of these things would seem no more a good predictor of the “later” than current stock prices of some supposed ventures xyz and zyz in technology a guarantee of future behavior.
So, who is right? Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets … with further insights!