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It's not just about performance and hardware access, it's about UI toolkits. Web-based and cross-platform apps just feel different. Even PhoneGap, Titanium, etc. haven't been able to solve this problem.

Right... because the browsers aren't there yet. They absolutely could be, though. Maybe Apple will stop Safari from being able, but they're actually yet to show any indication that they would do that.

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Add to that the difficult of using and discovering a web app. Apple, for instance, while embracing HTML5 as far justifying death of Flash goes, has made little visible effort to promote visibility of web apps. Some features of mobileSafari have been requested and missing for years (looking at you, contentEditable). That, and lack of an easy to browse web app store is what I would blame. Of course Aplle can't profit from webapps nearly as easily, so it does make sense.

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