> The only reason people make apps that don't need to be apps is to get another marketing channel through App Store distribution and another user reach channel through notifications.
I wrote a longer response but decided to scrap it. The behaviors and expectations are different than you might expect from a pure engineering POV. Its not just sales and marketing. For better or worse, people want to interact with companies' apps on their phone via installing something "trusted" through their appropriate app store. Not responsive mobile web, not even PWAs (which are difficult for people who are not tech savvy).
At my most recent exited startup, we had a web app which was mobile responsive. People asked for a mobile app. We gave them a mobile app that was simply a webview that loaded the web app. Customers loved it. We got almost no inbound from it at all for various reasons, but existing user satisfaction, engagement, etc went through the roof. They could finally "use our app on mobile" even though they always could, and we consistently pointed them to the mobile web experience to do so. This is a market full of people who are average to below average levels of tech savviness.
I wrote a longer response but decided to scrap it. The behaviors and expectations are different than you might expect from a pure engineering POV. Its not just sales and marketing. For better or worse, people want to interact with companies' apps on their phone via installing something "trusted" through their appropriate app store. Not responsive mobile web, not even PWAs (which are difficult for people who are not tech savvy).
At my most recent exited startup, we had a web app which was mobile responsive. People asked for a mobile app. We gave them a mobile app that was simply a webview that loaded the web app. Customers loved it. We got almost no inbound from it at all for various reasons, but existing user satisfaction, engagement, etc went through the roof. They could finally "use our app on mobile" even though they always could, and we consistently pointed them to the mobile web experience to do so. This is a market full of people who are average to below average levels of tech savviness.