Our post about Mobile Web vs. Mobile Apps was quite popular, and as a follow up, I’d like to discuss an approach to mobile application development we’ve found ourselves using a few times in the last little while.

As we outlined, Mobile Web apps have their advantages in terms of cost and broad device reach, however they lose out on the ability to access device hardware and don’t get the presence on App Stores.  There is a compromise that lets you take a bit of both worlds.

1. Develop your mobile web application.  This can be done for as many or as few devices as you’d like.  This application should take advantage of the rich browsers in iPhone/Android, BlackBerry 4.6+, etc. as well as offer a solid WAP experience on feature phones.
2. For each platform you really want to make your application shine, you would develop a native “Shell” application which is nothing more than a window into your Mobile Web site, utilizing the platform’s native web UI component/widget.

This gives you the following benefits:

1. Ability to hook into the native features of the device, such as GPS and Camera, passing information to the mobile web app as suitable.
2. Ability to list your application on the various App Stores, increasing your application’s presence in the market.
3. The flexibility of having a mobile web app – it can be updated on the server in a moments notice without requiring the user to update the installed application on their device.
4. Simple, quick development of a mobile web site, reaching a broad set of devices in advance of having a native application completed for various platforms.
5. Easy transition from mobile web to hybrid app when desired – you can push out the URL for downloading the native shell application when the users open your mobile web site
6. If you’re seeing huge uptake on a particular platform, you can always decide to move the application more towards a conventional full native application – taking advantage of caching, snappier UI changes, animations, etc.

So this is a “Hybrid Application” – a perfect combo of mobile web and mobile app, giving you flexibility and power to develop your application in stages, growing as your number of users does.