Comment by ssl-3

Yes, people (including the olds like myself) have been gravitating away from using a PC for everyday tasks and towards things like pocket supercomputers, and people new to the world definitely start with phones these days. Phones are similar to PCs, in that both kinds of devices have quite capable web browsers and can also run purpose-built software.

But if the question in the context of a phone is app-vs-web, then the analog on a PC is program-vs-web.

Which is interesting, I think.

Someone might download an app on their phone to accomplish a specific task instead of use a browser on that same phone, and that trend seems to be increasingly in favor of dedicated apps.

But on the PC side, it appears to be going the other way: Prior to the introduction of things like Sir Tim Berners-Lee's WWW and ubiquitous always-on Internet, most tasks on a PC were done with dedicated, local programs. That has changed.

Nowadays, we have things like whole office suites (pick any of them) and featureful CAD systems (like Onshape) that run quite well within a browser. POP and IMAP used to rule the day, and now we use Gmail in a browser. So on the PC, the longer trend seems to be more in favor of platform-independent web-based things instead of dedicated programs.

So, it seems that the two market segments -- while functionally similar -- are moving in opposite directions.

(I don't have an axe to grind here. I just think it's fun to think about these things.)