There was a big gap in parity between a web page and a native app in those days(the gap is still large today, but companies have a vested interest in keeping th

There was a big gap in parity between a web page and a native app in those days(the gap is still large today, but companies have a vested interest in keeping their software on their servers so you can subscribe forever...). Apple caught a lot of crap for not launching with a way to run native applications, and their web toolkit was a joke. The functional web browser was the main killer app, but the additional functionality of native applications is a non trivial part of the modern smartphone's success.