I think many of the people who are deploying through the app store would be better off deploying through the browser. Mobile web apps are surprisingly capable. I've ported one of my desktop web apps to mobile using appcache for offline support, and it works great. Especially on iOS where a homescreen web app launches chromeless there's almost no difference to a phonegap app except for the hardware / api access, which i didn't need because as pointed out i was porting a web app.
Yeah, I kept reading down to see where he would clarify that by 'web-first' he meant 'mobile-web-first' but that doesn't seem to be the case.
The tools for building mobile web apps aren't as good as they should (and hopefully will soon) be but it's certainly possible and gives you the flexibility to rapidly iterate, get the user up-and-running as fast as possible, etc.
