In 2019, we will have over 5 billion mobile phone users, of which more than half (2.7 billion) will be using a smartphone. That is a lot of people on a mobile device capable of surfing the internet, runnings apps, and accessing a whole lot of content. Popular sites like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and others have stated that they get more of their traffic and revenue from mobile devices than they do from traditional larger-screen devices like our desktops and laptops. While the following slide from Benedict Evans is a few years old, the trends highlighted have only accelerated:
Do these trends apply equally to all of us who aren’t your Googles, Facebooks, Pinterests, and Twitters of the world? If you have a web site/app, how much effort should you put into providing a mobile app experience? This post will try to help answer it.
To go mobile or not to go mobile?
On the surface, this may seem like a silly question. With several billion people accessing the net through a mobile device, it seems odd to not cater to my them. This is especially true when, in many countries (source), the only way users access the internet is through a mobile device.
Conclusion
PWAs are here to stay. While Google initially spearheaded the PWA initiative, today everyone from Samsung, Mozilla, Microsoft, and others work together with everyone else on evolving the next set of features that will make PWAs better. Browser support for the features like Service Worker is slowly approaching full adoption, so if you have been sitting on the fence on implementing some of the PWA featuers this article talked about, you should jump down and get coding!
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