Not desktop. Native. You can build native apps for smartphones and pretty much anything. Web comes into play when you decide you won’t build native version of what you want. In some cases that is guided by thoughts like “I know web will fit this project. I know the platform and will remember to keep memory and internet usage low”, but in most cases it’s about “no idea what that startup is about, but I know some AngularJS and they said I can use AWS so that’ll do”.
Similar thing is happening now with Unreal Engine 5. The difference between devs and webdevs became very similar to the difference between coding and vibe coding.
and doesn’t need to store a ton of data
I know by data you mean “data I care about as a dev” but that should also include data that is actually processed and saved on user’s device. And webapps are notoriously bad at keeping their caches and data usage low.
I didn’t say that. There are always well engineered apps and things. But few. Compared to that, a lot of mainstream desktop apps are now web apps for no good reason. The actual reason is webdevs not challenging themselves to become something else or at least better.
If I read your case correctly, it’s basically “customers use crappy laptops -> we decided to make them use web browsers” which sounds insane to me because web content IS the reason why tons of otherwise unnecessary upgrades are done in recent 10 years or so. Office guys can’t use Chrome with just 8 GB of RAM because it will affect their business performance.
Not that I don’t believe your case doesn’t contain other specifics that make web a right choice. And I don’t need to know more of that. It’s just how it sounded to me.