What Makes Cross-Platform Mobile App Development The Need Of The Hour

It's certainly annoying to choose between Android and iOS. On which device you should publish your business application? It’s a trade-off. Further, there are more options to think about. Although small in a fraction, worldwide there’s still growing user-base who use unique machines running specific operating system, like Blackberry, Tizen, Windows, etc. It’s like a double-edged sword. If you build a mobile application that targets people using a particular brand device, a lot of leads and inquiries are missed from other sources. On the other side, it turns out costlier to get written a separate codebase for every kind of mobile. The best alternative which comes to rescue in this situation is to approach a hybrid or cross-platform application development that collects huge audience from all types of operating systems and devices at par.

Since cross or multi-platform application development utilizes a modular concept, i.e.'write once, run anywhere’, it is affordable. It saves time, effort and is suitable for tablets, iPads as well as other smart devices. However, there are a few tools available to generate a platform-neutral mobile application. Popular hybrid app framework names include PhoneGap, React Native, Xamarin, IONIC, and Flutter. Each of these frameworks has pros and cons but they all are powering 100s of applications in the market and are in the matured state of development.

Let’s go on a quick tour for why the cross-platform mobile application is high in demand & futuristic.

1.Code Reusability

This is the biggest advantage that non-native or hybrid app development has to offer. It means that all the versions of your mobile application would be identical. The same number and types of functionalities. Most of the multi-platform frameworks render services directly in the browser(browser user interface). BUI is easy for the non-programming horde of people to interact with, as no configuration is needed.

2.Financially Feasibility

I don’t say that native frameworks are not open-source or are not free. Yet, if you are going to attract customers using any mobile device, you will still pay to a software programmer to make more than one fronts in accordance with how specific cell-phones can accept, for the matter of publishing a mobile app without errors. Principles of multi-platform development offer relatively low-cost publicity of your shop in comparison with native app frameworks via means of the all-comprising single codebase.

3.Consistent User Experience

There is no measure of designing to be well adjusted with profoundly different mobile applications. You may clone the color, screens, pages, features and so on. Replica of an existing application now reacts the same way. Yet, internally, both use distinct processes & distinct storage mechanism. They both should be in synchronization in order to avoid duplicate entries. On the other hand, being void of subtle differences throughout the navigation, a cross-platform app caters un-deviated Ux experience across platforms - which is in the vested interest of a vendor branding.

4.360 Degree Flexible Hosting

Due to less number of technical barriers, cross-platform apps are trending sky-high. Once your ground-breaking mobile application is ready to swipe the market, the next challenge is to select a perfect hosting partner. There are tons of options available to display a hybrid app on app-stores and they offer a variety of support like control over authentication, remote configuration capabilities, crash reports, app indexing, and storage limits, etc. depends on the chosen plan.

5.Easy To Find Talents

Anyone with command over HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can customize look and feel of a hybrid mobile application. This is NOT the case with native applications since they consume system-oriented bits of code. For example, an iOS dedicated app needs a Swift or Objective-C programmers while pure Android app demands the candidate should be capable to write code of Java or Kotlin language. Convenient to source skills means cheap labor and endless opportunities to tailor. This is just another reason to prefer a cross-platform software library when ordering or contracting mobile application development services.

Conclusion

Deciding on developing apps in native or cross-platform frameworks can be difficult. But there’s a solution for it, based upon what is the budget and timeframe of the app you are intending to develop. If you have a moderate budget and a shorter timeframe I highly recommend you to opt for cross-platform frameworks as you do not have to compromise in app quality and you can get near native-user experience.