If you have the need to support a broader set of mobile devices, you wish for a cross-platform technology. The dream is developing an app only once and deploying and running it with or without minimal changes everywhere on every device. Does this sound familiar? Well, Java once lined up to address this "write once, run everywhere" philosophy. Unfortunately, we have to deal with the big players, and Microsoft and Apple have no suitable possibility of using Java within their platforms. So, we still have the browser. And really, in the meantime, HTML5 technology is omnipresent and tries to fulfill the cross-platform promise. Control remains with the central application, there is no need to download or update software on the end device, and, perhaps most importantly, apps continue to be developed in the same way as before. We are dealing here (in some key aspects) with the same "good old web development"—only for smaller screens.
A lot of people state that you...