Native apps vs. third party apps

After CES and the announcement of all those amazing features coming to PlayBook and other tablets/phones etc, I started to think about the future of apps.

Now, am I right in assuming that native apps function better than 3rd party apps? Even though I know for a fact that there are plenty of amazing apps out there which are not native but work amazingly well.

And I often hear the cries of fellow CrackBerrians calling for certain functions to be made native.

So I would like to make a prediction: the race to get the most apps on your platform will slowly turn into a race to get the most apps built natively into that platform.

And if that happens, then App World and all the other respective app stores will slowly turn into an entertainment platform where the majority of apps will then be for gaming, bookstore, specialist apps and apps to configure/personalise your device.

If this is what the future looks like then RIM might have the lead advantage as a lot of things will come native in BB10 (judging by PlayBook 2.0). I haven't played around too much with iOS nor Android phones, so maybe someone can feedback on the number of apps they wished were native in those respective platforms?

What do you think guys? Am i talking nonsense or do you agree with my perspective?

First off, "native" means many things. You're using it to mean "from RIM, or bundled on the device". At least equally often it refers to apps which are written in C/C++ and which have fairly direct access to the lower levels of the OS, as opposed to WebWorks, AIR, or Android apps.

With your definition, "native" apps do "function better" (programmer abilities etc being ignored), since they have access to internal APIs that RIM hasn't published for the rest of us yet. Over time, however, they should make most of those things available and third-party devs can write equally interesting, high performance, and powerful apps.

There will be exceptions of course: RIM needs/wants to control security tightly, so sometimes features will never be made available to third-party apps, or will be but only under tight controls. An app that can take screenshots of anything running on the system, for example: not likely to see that any time soon, if ever, on the PlayBook.

Not sure I have an opinion about the rest of it...