Infographic: To app, or not to app

It’s clear that the mobile web is on the rise. Taking a look at the stats, it’s hard to see how desktop browsing can survive the onslaught.

People use smartphones for almost everything. 91% of US citizens own a smart phone, and with the relatively low cost compared to computers, smart phone usage is growing exponentially in the third world. America prefers the iPhone, Europe prefers Android, everyone it seems, is buying into mobile browsing.

That all leaves web designers with a difficult choice: do we build responsively, putting all our eggs in one basket; do we build a mobile site, splitting our traffic; or do we build a mobile app, forcing our users to download our content.

To help you decide, Benjie Moss put together this infographic of the pros and cons of each approach:

toappornottoapp_ig1


Benjie Moss is editor at WebdesignerDepot. He likes type design, semantic markup & elegant code. He’s usually training for a marathon. You can follow him @BenjieMoss.