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The State Of Progressive Web Apps Adoption By Developers In 2021
Photo by Monica Sauro on Unsplash
For the second year in a row, I ran some polls on Twitter about the relationship between developers and Progressive Web Apps.
Are PWA preached or adopted by developers? Do they use these on mobile and desktop? Do they develop these even if their support on iOS is not optimal? Do they think Apple will ever implement Web Push Notifications?
Here are some interesting facts and figures resulting of the new edition of my surveys.
I am not a statistician nor an expert in the redaction and interpretation of polls. In addition, the surveys happened on Twitter, therefore the answers were given by the people within my reach.
For such reasons, please do interpret following figures and comments as information, not facts.
Note also I am an Open Source and Progressive Web Apps aficionado. I will try my best to remain impartial in my writing 😉.
To my surprise, 58% of the developers are not using any PWA, installed on their phone home screen, on a weekly basis. That’s –11% fewer developers using regularly such applications instead of native apps (those you get through the App Store or Google Play Store) than previous survey.
Of course both types of applications are not mutually exclusive. It is common to say that PWA are a good fit to acquire early adopters and, that native fits well loyal customers.
The question also emphases the installation of the application on the devices’ home screen. If we ignore this variable and, would also consider the apps that are used directly in the browser, I would tend to think that the number of users would be probably higher.
That being said, roughly summarized, half of the developers do not use Progressive Web Apps installed on their mobile devices on a weekly basis.
The Progressive Web Apps is not optimal on iOS, I can notably mention the lack of installation prompt and, the absence of Web Push Notifications, I was looking to discover if, as previous year, the adoption rate was link to the operating system.
In the end, the answer is not so clear. 58% of those who do not use PWA have iPhones.
Such number is quite stable (-5%) in comparison to previous survey and still display a bigger “rejection” rate on iOS. Nevertheless, the gap is not that big.
However, among all results of this blog post, this particular one is to my opinion the one that should be taken with the most hindsight. I ran its poll on a Saturday and, it gathered really few answers.
After-all, what if in addition or instead of mobile devices, the future of PWA would not be primarily on desktop? This is one of the hypotheses which followed last year survey and, which I was willing to test.
As a result, I discovered that 30% of the developers are using PWA installed on their computers (pinned to dock, desktop or start menu) on a weekly basis.
On this type of device we are used to installing applications or using browser’s favorites features, that’s why I particularly find this number quite interesting.
Furthermore, being able to install Progressive Web Apps on the desktop, with the help of an installation button in the browsers, is something which can be still considered as, to some extension, a recent feature (if I am not wrong, for example introduced two years ago in Chrome v76 for the first time).
Adoption as a user is something but, what about the development behavior. Do the developers developed one or many Progressive Web Apps in 2020?
As a matter of fact, they did. 72% of the devs have initialized new PWAs last year.
This question would probably need some more questions to refine the granularity of the question (do they “just” added a worker to cache the assets or did they develop the applications with offline first strategies? etc.) but, for the majority it seems that it is the way to go development wise.
Thanks to the help of bubblewrap and tools build around it as the PWABuilder, it is possible relatively easily to publish Progressive Web Apps in the Google Play Store.
Because I am quite a fan of this solution, I wondered if other developers were too.
According to my surveys, 18 developers within my reach (one third of those who answered the poll) have already published their Progressive Web Apps in the Google Play Store.
To end up the surveys with a question, which to my eyes has a direct link with the adoption rate of Progressive Web Apps on mobile devices, I asked developers if they think Apple will ever support Web Push Notifications on iOS.
After-all, they do already support such feature on OSX but, do not on iOS devices (even though their strategy seems to merge both experience, think as for example about the M1 processor 🤷)️.
15% think it will happen for sure, and for the rest, the developers are divided between whether it can happen or never (both 42.5%).
Not really a surprise to me that the trust in Apple is low on Twitter when it comes to the topic Web and Progressive Web Apps. Interesting on the other hand is that it is not a clear “all or nothing” scenario. Many developers do think it might happen. I would guess that probably some, as I do, think states’ regulations or anti-trust might be able someday to force Apple to open its mobile system. Remember, even if you install Chrome or Firefox on your iPhone, it is still Safari underneath.
I have got a bit mixed feeling about the results of this survey. To some extension, as a Progressive Web Apps aficionado, I am a bit disappointed that fewer developers seem to use these on a weekly basis on mobile devices. On the contrary, I am happy to notice the promising adoption’s rate on desktop and, that others ship their PWA to the Google Play Store too.
I just added a reminder for June 2022 in my calendar to run such surveys again and, I am already looking forward to the results.
To infinity and beyond!
David
P.S.: You can read the results of the previous surveys, those of 2020, here.
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