There are certainly plenty of native desktop applications which have not been supplanted by web applications. But the bigger problem is that desktop machines t

There are certainly plenty of native desktop applications which have not been supplanted by web applications. But the bigger problem is that desktop machines typically have high speed, almost unlimited data connections. This is not necessarily true for mobile platforms, where there can be coverage issues, bandwidth limitations due to insufficient spectrum and/or cell power buildout, or worse yet, magic break points after which you pay $$$/kb uploaded or downloaded. This is one of the reasons why local storage and native applications may be much more important for mobile applications. No one expects to bring a desktop computer onboard an airplane or a subway and be able to read e-mail. But they do expect to be able to do this on a mobile device.