The web apps that will eat mobile
Progressive Web Apps have the potential to be massively disruptive to apps as we know them now... and that&#x27;s <i>before</i> the near-native speeds that WASM will bring are factored into the equation.  After making the mistake of going all-in on Xamarin in 2014 I realized, much to my chagrin, that the future of mobile is HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.  Sure, there are cases where certain features require vendor-native apps for now, for example if you want to register a service that runs in the background without the app being launched.  Currently that&#x27;s not possible with mobile web or hybrid but there&#x27;s no reason the mobile OS cannot look for and hook JavaScript -- or WASM -- code and run it as part of a background service. Could be as simple as specifying in the app manifest one or more code files which contain logic for background processes along with instructions like &quot;run this only when the app is active, run it all the time, or run it on this cron schedule.&quot;<p>A completely different question is whether vendors like Apple will refuse to support something like this because it circumvents the need to deliver via the app store (and  the $$$ they collect through the Apple Developer Program)  but there&#x27;s no reason background services and processes can&#x27;t be implemented in JavaScript.