Apple’s iOS runs web-based applications at “significantly slower speeds” when they are launched from the iPhone or iPad’s homescreen than via the company’s Safari browser, according to tests by developers and The Register. A web app run from the iOS home screen runs “roughly two to two and a half times” slower than it does in the browser, according to the publication. “It appears that whereas Apple has updated the iOS 4.3 Safari browser with its high-speed Nitro Javascript engine, Nitro is not used when web apps are launched from the home screen,” the publication says. “It’s unclear whether these are accidental bugs or issues consciously introduced by Apple,” it notes. Either way the conclusion appears to be that the iOS platform makes web apps less attractive than native apps sold through the App Store.

The company’s mobile OS also “hampers the performance of these [web-based] apps in other ways” than just speed, says the publication. Web-based apps on the home screen cannot use various web caching systems and are not rendered with Apple’s newer “asynchronous mode,” it notes, “which means they don’t look quite as good.”