We create a lot of mobile apps; we offer our client the choice, always, and they always pick cross platform. From a client point of view, they don't see this as a subpar experience; they have their app delivered rapidly, it looks great (as the designer just delivered PSDs or PNGs which look EXACTLY like the client wants), we cut it pixel perfect to something crossplatform (depends if it's a game or normal app or combination what tech we use for that) and in the end the client receives what they saw in those first screens they had made on their mobile. Generally looking better than 99% of the native apps out there; the top 100 of iOS apps sure look good (well... not even all of them...), but below that it rapidly degrades. So unless you are doing something cutting edge, I cannot agree with your statement here.

Having said that, we do native apps as well; on iOS the experience is better, but you'll be paying a bit more to get it to that point. While on Android, it is just very very hard to get something as nice looking as we can do it in HTML5. It can be done, but personally I don't think it's worth it. For our development process we use 'business value' as a key indicator of deliverability and the difference between the PhoneGap apps and and native apps on Android do not deliver enough (actually any) business value to warrant the higher price tag.