With facebook, LinkedIn going off the Hybrid route a year or two ago and now with Asana also leaving the path of hybrid one might think hybrid apps have no place in Appland.

However, some banks seem to have made some successful hybrid apps as we’ll shortly see.

What makes them successful?
Probably the following two key factors:

• Kept Simple in a good way: the apps offer useful functionalities in a simple way. They get the job done.
• Limited budgets: banks have deep pockets, but don’t necessarily want to or can spend the huge amounts required to offer native apps on all the ‘channels’ they’re offering services on (e.g. iOS, Android, mobile web, desktop web, kiosks…). Limitations make people inventive and pragmatic.
• Optimizations: keeping the HTML and JavaScript packaged/cached. This makes hybrid apps much more reactive.

Time will tell if those hybrid apps will keep being popular. But I’m guessing they have a bright future as long as they keep it simple 🙂

Now, on to the three banking apps…

UBS

Good points, both on the App and Play stores.  Notice how similar both apps look.

Tangerine

Also good points on both stores.

Bank of America

Very good grades on the Play Store and less good ones on the App Store.  Notice however, that no-one is talking about ‘how bad the hybrid app is’.  The complaints are about the transfer feature that became more cumbersome.

Conclusion

These apps prove that hybrid has its place in Appland.  If implemented properly and when offering the proper functionalities, users do enjoy them.