Syncing and resolving conflicts is one of those things that everyone thinks is initially easy then realizes how difficult it is.

All I saw was the problems when he talked about that. The data will be a mess (if his database is in any way similar to the one I work on).

Then they punt and centralize.

Yes, it is incredibly hard. But on the other hand, the problem of clients losing connection does not go away just because syncing is hard. If you're targeting mobile users, you have the choice between your app being unavailable a lot of the time to a lot of users, or handling syncing.