the decision to shift towards web apps and electron apps is mostly because of the cheapness of the development, and binding to service-oriented architecture thus monthly payment... in other words: money
That kind of is the point. That's just the latest iteration of this. You could have made the same argument about writing a business application in visual basic vs. writing something in C/C++. The latter required more time and skills. Both of which cost money. Which is why visual basic was so popular. It's also why cobol caught on in the sixties even though there were more optimal things around even then. And hardware was still really expensive.
However I could see a paradigm shift towards standalone apps if there was a proper language or C++ mod increasing its usability and easiness, AND there was no pressure to do so much on cloud-based.
Also interoperability I guess is a problem (html really IS a consistent UI for every platform)
