My non evil take: Because design interfaces for humans to interact with is expensive. You can save yourself a bunch of R&D, manufacturing and maintenance if yo

My non evil take: Because design interfaces for humans to interact with is expensive. You can save yourself a bunch of R&D, manufacturing and maintenance if you can have the users provide the interface design. That basically what the majority of smartphone apps are for. Sure some of it is convenience for the end user, but for everything that needs to interact with something in the real world it's a cost saving measure. As to why not webpages.... don't know, seems less serious I suppose. Personally I can't deal with more apps on by phone.