In general, I see the notion of an app as being contrary to the value users seek to obtain from mobile - they want access to any information they might need, at any moment they might need it, in any location they happen to be at the time. The Mobile Web has the potential to deliver this in a way that apps cannot.
However, the mobile Web is presently lacking in content, much as the Internet was during its early years. Up until about 1995, you were better off having a CompuServe or AOL account because you could do more with it than you could on the Internet, which was largely composed of collections of academic research - but eventually, the number of sites exploded to the point where the capabilities of the Internet surpassed online services and made them obsolete.
.... but that leads off on a digression that has already been talked to death, so let me try to get this meditation back on the rails ...
To have access to an app, you must download it in advance: that is to say you must know, or at least have a general sense, of what nature of information you might need in future. And in that way, the mobile device has little advantage, save compactness, over a written resource that a person might carry with them - it is in effect a digital backpack that you must load before you go out into the world.
Granted, some argument can be made that a user can access an app store at any time to download something he might discover a need for - so it's not strictly true that the mobile device is entirely cut off and limited - but it does take considerable time to download an app when, at the moment the user discovers a need for information, they want it immediately, not after a wait of several minutes while an application is downloaded. And then, he's stuck with an app cluttering up his device and consuming (limited) resources that he only needed once, in an odd situation.
The mobile Web, meanwhile, provides much faster access to needed information - again, with the caveat that the information is available at all - without the necessity to predict in advance what might be needed. And that's where I see the mobile Web winning: especially when you consider that the mobile device travels with you, wherever you may go, it's not feasible to know what information or resources you might need in any situation you encounter and load it into the device in advance.
You can predict some of your informational needs, but you will still find yourself in situations where you need something you didn't foresee and didn't prepare for, and if you rely solely on apps, you would be left as helpless as a person who didn't have a mobile device at all. Granted, the user is not required to choose one or the other - mobile devices support both, so the user can download apps for their predictable needs and refer to the mobile Web for the unpredicted ones ... but in terms of evolution, I expect the latter will surpass the former, just as the Internet surpassed AOL, when the volume of resources reaches critical mass.
To download (and pay for) an app to check stock prices is as foolish as to download a software program to your computer that does the same simple thing. Which brings to mind the notion of Apple Widgets (and Windows Gadgets), simple uni-tasking programs for doing things like checking the weather report, stock prices, or playing a game using a local application rather than going to a Web site for the same details. Neither of these caught on, and were laughed down by users and the industry alike. But is this not the same as mobile apps?
And while I'm chasing down analogies, consider the fate of the encyclopedia - not merely that a digital version has replaced the voluminous paper version, but that online encyclopedias versus encyclopedia applications. To sell (or buy) an encyclopedia on CD-ROM is virtually as silly as to sell (or buy) a paper copy. Some still do, and it's a matter of personal preference, but from an objective standpoint, the online version is superior to the CD-ROM version in many respects. And my sense is the exact same thing is true of the mobile Web versus mobile applications - likely, the list of advantages is about the same.
And still, I have my doubts.
The decision of whether to use an app or a mobile site is similar to the decision as to whether to develop a computer application or deliver the functionality via the Internet. And while the Internet is resplendent with informational resources, there are still a multitude of applications, written to be installed on a specific machine, from which users will not be parted.
Even when the limitation of location is addressed, users tend to prefer stand-alone applications for specific functions. Google Docs can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection and is entirely serviceable as a word processing program, yet it still has not replaced Microsoft Word as the text editor of choice for a vast majority of users, who prefer to store and edit their documents locally in spite of the fact that they are locked to a specific computer.
My sense is that this will continue to be true of the mobile platform: even should every imaginable need for information be satisfied by resources on the mobile web, and connectivity is no longer in doubt (which was also a problem of the Internet in its early stages) there will be certain instances in which users will prefer to have a local app on their mobile device to perform a specific task.
So I find it highly doubtful that the "battle" will ever be won - users will turn to whatever they prefer to address their needs, and developers will continue to provide both mobile apps and mobile web capabilities. And neither is in necessary for one or the other to win at all - there's absolutely nothing wrong with having options and leaving it to each user to choose what best suits their purpose - it's largely the narcissism of UX designers to assume there is only "one best way" to do any task and seek to eliminate alternatives ... but that's an entirely separate meditation.
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A sort of afterthought: the battle, such as it is, is being fought in the wrong field. The decision of "app or web" is too often made for reasons that have nothing to do with its serviceability to the user. The cost of development, or the capabilities of the developers, often drive the decision, with the belief that the user will happily accept whatever decision they care to make.
Given the poverty of resources on the mobile web in its current incarnation, the providers still have the power to make such decisions to suit their own interest instead of those of their users, and users will indeed have to live with the consequences of their decision for lack of a better alternative. But as soon as users catch wind of a good mobile site for doing a specific task, or better yet a handful of alternatives, the demand for an app to do it will likely dry up.
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