And my point is, why, if you're making money on this service, then why not just do a native client?

Especially with its native client and unlimited file size upload.

Users will have to rely on Android's own native e-mail client, which leaves a lot to be desired.

And I just think, how hard is it to write a native client?

Regnum Online provides clients in Windows and Linux (native client).

If you're a commercial enterprise making money from people, selling them your client, sell them a native client for their platform.

The BlackBerry PlayBook shipped without a native e-mail client or calendar feature.

XBMC can be used to play/view all common multimedia formats through its native clients and parsers.

Because it is standards-based, there is no "native" client.

I tried several applications on my N900 (which didn't have a native client), and since neither of them had offline functionality they were pretty much useless to me.