The demand for "apps" is growing quickly – they are becoming one of the primary ways to deliver internet and cloud-based services to consumers. However, the technologies currently used for developing apps have a number of drawbacks. First, today's apps are "native apps": they require development using programming languages that are specific to a particular platform (Apple iOS, Google Android,). For developers, this means that every platform requires a separate development effort, increasing development cost. For consumers, this means that not all apps are available on all platforms, because developers may choose to only target one platform due to cost issues. A final drawback: none of the dominant app stores used to distribute and sell apps are provided by European companies.HTML5-based "apps" developed using a combination of HTML, CSS and Javascript can solve many of the issues of native apps. This is because HTML5 is platform and device agnostic, making it easy to move apps from one platform to another and also from one device to another (e.g. mobile to tablet to connected TV to connected car).As a result, developers are increasingly moving from "native apps" to HMTL5 apps, and are completely dropping out of the popular proprietary popular app stores in some cases. However, today, HTML5 cannot be used to fully replace native apps. This is because it is lacking a certain number of functionalities such as rich APIs to interact with devices (e.g. to launch a phone call from within an app) or support for handling of payments. The goal of the HTML5Apps project is to close the gap between native and HTML5 apps through the standardisation of missing HTML5 functionality.The project is lead by GEIE ERCIM, the European Host of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an industry consortium of currently more than 370 members from research and industry which is directed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web.