And for years, it was our most requested feature, by far. We had instructions for how to pin the site to your home screen, and would explain to users how the website does everything an app can do. Still, constant requests for an app. Finally we relented and released one, and very quickly around half our mobile traffic moved to the app without us really trying to nudge people at all.
People just really like apps! I think it suits our mental model of different tools for different uses. We've also found that app users are much more engaged than website users, but of course much of that will be selection bias. Still, I can see how having your app on someone's home screen could provide a significant boost to retention, compared to a website they're liable to forget. For us now, that's the main benefit we see. Certainly don't use any additional data, though I won't argue that other companies don't.
I do grant that web is likely more up to date. But only because they can ship immediately, without the app store review process. Technically web could also be slower to release, nothing guarantees web freshness.
https://www.androidauthority.com/auto-update-apps-google-pla...
Then, on a worldwide scale, you can see that a lot of people are running unsupported Android versions.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/android
Yes, there is no guarantee they a web app is more secure or up to date but tge likelyhood is far greater as it's a developer's responsibility and not the end consumer.