That makes little to no sense.

This reeks of the same logic that caused them to disable HTML file upload buttons (there's "no" filesystem -- which is apparently why you can't even browse for photos and uploads until recent IOS).

This is what drove "there's an app for that" for so many years: Apple's systematic limiting of web apps into a severely curtailed walled garden so that the app store would -- in fact, could -- be the only source for real applications.

"Web Apps aren't as performant as native" is a direct result of such strategies.

In other words, those strategies WORKED. As with all anti-competitive practices, they will keep doing their job for a while, until something new and better (or at least workable) comes along.