Ok, so the title may be a little misleading, but I think it rings true when it comes to apps that are a mirror of their company’s websites. In the earlier days of mobile apps, websites did not scale well on mobile phones and mobile apps were basically an extension of the company’s website. With responsive web design getting more and more advanced, the need for a separate app to display the same information as your website is becoming… well dead.
And why shouldn’t this be the case? With HTML5 and CSS3 there are so many more tools available to web developers that make this task easy. With responsive web design, CSS3 can be used to determine screen width and display alternate style sheets depending on screen size. This lets site owners store one set of content with it automatically resizing to fit the user’s desktop, tablet, or mobile phones.
Until recently it was mostly small companies taking advantage of the benefits of responsive design as large corporations had too much process and content behind them to make the change. Slowly more and more big businesses are jumping on the bandwagon (as they should) making content and user experience more consistent across the board. To see some of the top names in the industry using responsive design, check out this article: Top 10 Large Companies Using Responsive Web Design Technology
Although the company I work for, Time Warner Cable, didn’t make the above list, building and maintaining a responsive site has been one of the top goals since I joined the team.