Because human beings are irrational and want "apps". I have numerous examples of native apps that are just wrappers around the web app performing extremely well (massively increasing conversion rates, revenue, etc) over the existing PWA.

IMHO, for Android and IOS, Flutter is solid enough to implement apps which are near native ones in terms of performance and "look & feel"

You get access to more APIs specific to the native platform, the looks and feel is far better (I can easily see when an app isn't a native iOS app - e.g., Liquid Glass is awesome), and the tool ecosystem (e.g., Xcode is specifically built for Apple Apps).

On macOS and iOS, I prefer native apps because Apple gives these apps a bunch of extras in terms of keyboard shortcuts and functionality.

Non-native apps that are web views don't get this functionality unless the developer properly hooks it or mimics it. They rarely get this right.

That said, I'm not sure of the current state of Flutter and RN. They resolve to OS native controls, so theoretically they should support these types of base functionalities, correct?

For most apps, cross platform like Flutter or RN is the best choice. For apps highly bind on the hardware, or need better performance, usually native is better. But for vibe coding or harness coding today, if workload is not the problem, native is usually a better choice, it allows you do different thing on different platform.

For users, ease of use.

For companies, ease of additional tracking.

It really isn't some _deep_ thing. Users like to be able to quickly access the content they want to consume. Companies want data. Apps fulfill both of these requirements.

Native apps are not needed unless you want want performance and need to extract all the juice your hardware offers. Only AAA video games come to mind.

Performance.