Customer pressures. Don't want to pay for iPhones ('too costly'), and then for long very hard to optimize for Android ('why too slow?') (even native... wait if native why slow? Because they buy the worst, cheapest androids ever, then later buy androids that cost similar to iPhones, so it was a big switch cost for nothing at the end)

Eventually, it became nice because it worked to give the app a wider reach. Then I added an e-commerce front, so it made sense. But is it less costly than native? Not.