TJ Van Toll

Hybrid development, or the approach of building native apps using Web technologies, has gone through its fair share of highs and lows. But, despite high-profile abandonments from the likes of Facebook and LinkedIn, hybrid development continues to be used by a substantial number of developers. For instance, a VisionMobile 2014 study of over 7,000 developers found that “15% of app developers use HTML5 beyond the browser, via hybrid apps or HTML5-to-native tools.” PhoneGap touts that the library “has been downloaded over 1 million times and is being used by over 400,000 developers.” But what do those numbers mean for the future of hybrid? Is hybrid as a platform growing or shrinking? Is performance still a limiting factor for hybrid apps? In this talk we’ll attempt to answer those questions. We’ll look at where the hybrid ecosystem is today, and where it’s heading.