Progressive web apps (PWAs), when mobile phones began taking a larger share in marketshare than desktop PCs, appeared poised to revolutionize technology – something they ultimately did! As PWAs are reliable, fast, and engaging experiences for consumers as well as businesses alike; both groups quickly understood just how essential PWAs would become within their respective industries.

Developers could quickly craft applications that loaded instantly (never having to worry about website downtime), responded instantly when user interactions occurred, and appeared and felt just like traditional applications – making PWAs no surprise in today’s marketplace.

To understand the significance of PWAs, just consider Uber. When they rolled out an entirely new service that relied heavily on PWAs to expand into new markets quickly. One key driver behind their decision: they wanted their web app’s user experience to mirror that found on native mobile apps – PWAs enabled this task effectively.

PWA technology ensured Uber applications would work equally on slower networks as fast connections, thus guaranteeing all customers have a positive experience using Uber services.

PWAs have long been around, yet are currently enjoying rapid adoption by companies across industries – not only Uber but Tinder, Pinterest, Starbucks, Twitter Trivago Spotify Telegram Forbes among many. HubSpot predicts that PWAs could replace traditional web apps completely sometime within 2024!

What Is a Progressive Web App (PWA) Alex Russell of Google coined the term progressive web apps (PWAs) to refer to apps with progressive elements in 2015. PWAs are enhanced web apps designed specifically to run within either a browser or on mobile devices and cache data from previous interactions to ensure functionality even without internet connectivity.

When traveling through an area with spotty connectivity, this feature becomes absolutely crucial. No matter the strength or weakness of a signal strength signal, the application still functions perfectly fine.

PWAs, with their API-driven design and use of ServiceWorkers that add special features, go far beyond that of typical web apps in terms of capabilities and access points for users – for instance they can be accessed anywhere without an internet connection; some can even work within browsers so as to function like native apps regardless of operating systems and platforms they may run on.

Now that you understand what PWAs are, you may be curious as to their place within modern workflows and deployments. At their introduction in 2001, DevOps, cloud native technology, containerization were just emerging – now these technologies pervade most businesses globally.

Containerization makes deployment of massive, scalable services possible – meeting almost every imaginable need – thanks to containers. And because these services can automatically scale based on demand fluctuation, combining auto-scaling containers and PWAs’ ability to perform while offline could create the ideal conditions to ensure customers remain pleased with performance of your app.

Automation and DevOps also bring many other advantages.

Imagine this. Your DevOps pipeline has been fully automated to keep traditional apps and services operating smoothly, now imagine being able to automate PWA iterations so they are quickly updated every day to reflect changes either within their app itself or how users perceive data presented via PWAs. Such automation would likely prove easy given most web apps use HTML/CSS/JavaScript for development; automating such application stack would not only streamline development efforts but could make PWAs more reliable while improving uptime/availability and your bottom line too!

PWAs fit nicely into today’s landscape because both Apple and Google now allow PWAs to be published to their app stores – meaning any Android or iOS user can easily install PWAs from trusted sources on either platform. As over 50% of consumers now primarily access the internet from phones, PWAs will become ever more popular; given your company can submit one directly into either app store, your customers won’t even need to bother sideloading apps!

PWABuilder makes creating packaged PWAs easy, and your developers can submit them quickly to Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Microsoft Store and Meta Quest Store for approval.

PWAs currently cannot be used on wearable devices like watches. This is due to PWAs requiring at least minimal web browser capability in order for it to function effectively – specifically the ability to render HTML5. As wearable devices become more popular and their capabilities improve accordingly, however it will only take time before PWAs start functioning with both Android and Apple watches.

PWAs may not be ideal in every circumstance, but they do present many advantages to users and developers alike – providing accessibility features as well as additional perks – in just the short time since their debut, they’ve grown rapidly in popularity; could they replace web apps in 2017 entirely? No one knows for certain; yet all signs point toward this being possible.

PWAs may become mainstream mobile and web apps over time; indeed this has already begun happening with streaming video services adopting them instead of more traditional applications due to heavy UI usage which consumes bandwidth and system resources; they must instead focus on content delivery while remaining as performant as possible – which explains why PWAs have slowly started overtaking traditional ones.

As more streaming services emerge, more companies will turn to PWAs as their go-to delivery method of content.