Some of the impetus towards cross platform HTML5 development was probably because the state of Android app design in the 2.x era was so bad. You could basically

Some of the impetus towards cross platform HTML5 development was probably because the state of Android app design in the 2.x era was so bad. You could basically get away with using an iOS-look-alike web toolkit on Android in a WebView, and it was "good enough". With Ice Cream Sandwich, the new Holo look and feel actually has a real design language that is markedly different from an iOS app. As to Windows Phone - there is such a strong design for Windows Phone apps that those jQuery Mobile apps in their app store look really out of place. Microsoft's working on some CSS that will make jQuery Mobile apps look more native, but it's still missing some of the key Windows Phone UI like panorama. From developing HTML5 and native mobile apps for iOS and Android, and from follow ups on some mobile application strategy consults, HTML5 mobile apps just don't deliver a good user experience, especially if the app does anything other than content consumption.