Is it better to develop a mobile website or a dedicated smartphone app

Question

I need to decide where to invest my engineering resources and I'm wondering how other folks have decided whether to invest resources in a mobile website or smart phone applications

Answer 1

I personally prefer mobile websites as they are platform independent. Smart phone apps are great if you want to make an app that isn't connection dependent. Depends on what you want to make and who you want to make it for. My 2 cents.

Answer 2

We did a mobile website. It works on all the phones with a data plan. You can even create "quick launch" icons for download for some of the phones, like Blackberry.

Answer 3

Depends, if you pretend target many devices and you don´t need strong hardwared functionality (like games), i think it is better make a web apps. HTML5 and DeviceAPI will give new access to device functionality. Here some posts.

Answer 4

I agree with edl and Marcus. If you create a smart phone app, you will most certainly have to port it to at least 3 platforms. You also have feature/dumb phones that you'll possibly need to port t to j2me or brew.

If you create a mobile web site, although there will be limitations almost all phones with a decent browser will be able to use it. Mobile web sites have their own problems too but it would be less costly and easy to adapt.