You're right...
... but it's only after using a browser as good as the N900's that you'd realise this.
The only advantage of an app over a properly designed mobile site is that the App (usually) will download less data. However, that assumes that the app is well written; there are a lot of service apps that just stick a HTML view on the screen, then... load the service's mobile page into it!
Games and utilities need to be apps, and these are generally at the $5 price level, not $1. The remaining catalogue of "apps" on the major stores falls into the category of "Content presenters", things that just decorate or re-format an existing web service. These are the things that are on the way out, thankfully.
Say you're company XYZ, and your marketing people say you need a mobile app, what do you do? If you do only Android or iOS apps, and it's genuinely useful (most aren't), you'll get complaints from other customers, asking why you've no BlackBerry or Nokia app, or no Windows Phone version. So, your effort to improve customer relations just made about a third of your customers feel like second-class citizens. Great.
Better to create a mobile-optimised website, and distribute the bookmarks on the App stores (or distribute via QR Code/NFC for non-Apple platforms). This way, anyone with a decent browser can use your service, and you pay a lot less to provide it. Also, you get to update it without having to rehire a developer or wait three weeks for some intern in Cupertino to get around to approving it. That latter point is a big deal when your app is part of a marketing campaign.