There are lots of hypes about Progressive web apps (PWA). However, it may not fly for a few reasons:
1. There are no centralized app stores so users cannot find the apps, reviews, ratings, no. of downloads etc. to guide them what apps to use
2. No centralized app stores to handle the security check so users are not willing to take the risks as PWAs do have access to users’ cameras etc. On the other hand, developers do not have the incentive to develop such apps as no one is promoting them in an appstore, developers do not want to handle the payments for a few dollars per app if no appstore can do that for them.
3. As a result, so far, no great PWA apps to use, and most of the PWAs are toy apps, free.
My question is, if Google is really serious about PWA, why not they also list PWAs in there play store the same way they treat native apps?
Great concept, but no one is really serious about it or executing it.
On the other isde of the world, WECHAT Xiaochengxu (small programs) is doing the similar things but it can only run on WeCHAT app, which itself is really cross-platform. You do not need to install/uninstall Xiaochengxu but developers and users take advanatge of wechat’s platform, the community, payment, users and groups etc.. It excited the Chinese IT community since it was relased on 1/9/2017 and will be more successful then PWA I think. It is more like a Tencent’s OS running on top of JS scripts.
Having said that, I do see a PWA appstore at:
http://atlantaonlinegaragesale.ichinesenews.com/22-pwa-apps?orderby=reference&orderway=asc