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There is great value in building one product instead of three.

>The kind of deep user information you can gather by installing a full blown app compared to a more sandboxed web app is worth way more than the 30% royalty cut.

What kind of information is that?

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Great value to whom? The only value I've ever heard of that made any sense at all was "saves me money and lets me change things and publish them faster" and that (as other commenters have said) is a developer / manager value, not a user value.

Developer value is totally user value. The developer "changes things and publish them faster" for the customer, it's not a hobby.

It's tempting to think so, but IME users download apps to get things done more than they want to "ooh" and "aah" over an app's UI changes and I've been an app developer since 2009. It's all too easy to push out someone's pet feature (or something to buff up someone's resume for their next job) and if it's a speed-focused company it's a coin flip whether there is someone acting as the gatekeeper to keep that kind of nonsense out.

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