native apps will continue to be built so long as there are performance benefits, or increased access to native functionality, or finer grained control over UI o

native apps will continue to be built so long as there are performance benefits, or increased access to native functionality, or finer grained control over UI or other benefits available to native applications. As I recall (I wasn't an owner of the original Iphone myself) it wasn't until a second version of iOS that an App store and third party native apps were allowed. How could you have a web app that interacts with a device without a native layer at some level? At some level, you have to have a native application, though a company could make their stack directly compatible with web applications. That said, I think you are going to continue to see people developing frameworks like Phonegap, because the idea of developing once has a variety of advantages for developers, and I/O is going to be the limiter on many processes.