My mobile app, which development path should I choose: Native or HTML5?
When developing your mobile app, you face an important choice. Should you develop it in the next generation web markup language, HTML 5, which was designed to a large extent to enable enhanced functionality within the desktop or mobile web browser; or should you use the native development environments to develop a native application? In other words, should you design a mobile web based app, or should you design your application to run natively on the iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry, or other mobile operating system?
This decision has wide implications for your application, and several factors will determine a thoughtful choice. For example: Is your app primarily communicating or delivering information, or does it require significant computational resources, with perhaps moving maps, geolocation, rich media, or interfacing with the many sensors and outputs built into mobile devices? If it is the latter, native mobile development is almost always the way to go. On the other hand, if your app will primarily work as a method to format and deliver data, HTML5 may be a viable, less costly option.