Have you used say gmail on web vs app, or youtube web vs app. You may not have much of a need for a apps in your life or you are opting for an inferior experience and making your life harder.
Microsoft seems to be doing everything they can to push everyone to writing platform agnostic software:
1. Game streaming, which opens the doors to app streaming
2. Progressive Web Apps, teaming with google to create a tool to publish them directly to the Android Play Store
3. At one point, they created tools to port iOS and Android apps to windows mobile
4. Investing in React Native and Xamarin
Personally, I am not a fan since today, the quality of these apps are really bad and give developers too much power. But seems Microsoft is trying to get a foothold to relaunch Windows Mobile again once more apps switch over
Take that App Library and compare it to iOS and Android. Windows is missing so many apps that people want it’s not even a comparison. Before Microsoft killed windows mobile they were desperate to get developers to make more apps for their OS. So much so that they
1. Paid people 100-200k to port their iOS or Android app to it
2. Invested in tooling that can let windows phone run ios and android apps natively
Both failed and now they are investing in PWAs likely with the hopes of getting a bunch of devs to switch over. With the end goal being them rereleasing windows phone in a few years with rich PWA support.
Basically the lack of apps killed windows mobile and would be no different here
I remember when the microsoft app store on windows 8 were a bunch of websites wrapped into an app. It really lowered the quality of apps and the overall appeal of the windows app store.
That being said, how will PWAs get around the apple and google requirements that apps downloadable from their stores where they mention apps can't just be a website wrapped into an app?