Your Ultimate Guide to Mobile Development
Mobile development is a promising, if not dominant, method of developing a digital product. The reason for this is that mobile devices are more widely available than personal PCs and laptops. More than 80% of the worldwide population already has a smartphone, making it difficult to ignore the mobile market when launching a digital product.
With the growth of the mobile industry, more and more technologies are becoming available to help you construct your product. What technology stack should be chosen? What factors should entrepreneurs consider while selecting development teams? Here’s our mobile development primer, complete with real-world examples. For additional examples, visit ronasit.com.
Hybrid and indigenous development
Although your business strategy may dictate that you produce a mobile app for only one or the other platform owing to the preferences or market characteristics of your target audience, it is typical to create an app that is compatible with both Android and iOS devices.
Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android are the programming languages required by the two existent platforms. As a strategy to reduce development resources, a single solution for both platforms was unavoidable. As opposed to employing platform-specific languages, this development method was dubbed Hybrid. Let’s have a look at the differences between Hybrid and Native mobile apps using two examples to assist you to decide which development technique is best for your concept.
You’re creating an app in the wellness business. It’s a diet log app that offers a variety of plans to follow while also assisting users in reaching their weight loss or gain goals by recording calories consumed. You manage a wellness facility and market the app, among other things. It is safe to go with the Hybrid strategy and save money this way.
However, if you want to add capabilities that primarily rely on smartphone hardware – camera, accelerometer, Bluetooth, NFC – the Native method may be preferable. Native apps, for example, will work wonderfully if you want the app to count the number of steps or link to wearables. Hybrid apps perform badly since they are not designed for a specific platform. Because iOS and Android have distinct ways of interacting with smartphone hardware, Hybrid apps face hurdles.
When the app contains capabilities that interact with the smartphone’s hardware or when the app handles large data amounts, the Native method is the best solution. In other circumstances, the Hybrid strategy can aid in the conservation of development resources. Both are just tools from which one may select based on the app’s functionality, financial limits, and business goal. Despite significant dispute, no strategy is definitively superior to another.
Hybrid vs. Native
How to Select a Technology Stack for a Hybrid Approach
The Hybrid approach to mobile development includes a variety of frameworks for building your app. Ionic, ReactNative, and Flutter are among the most popular.
The option is determined by the app’s commercial goal. The Ionic framework, for example, can benefit eCommerce apps that are only catalogs. Such Ionic apps will give an enjoyable in-app experience while saving the app owner money throughout the development stage.
If you’re releasing something more complicated, like as an app with social networking and chat capabilities, it’s better to use ReactNative or Flutter rather than Ionic. The difference between ReactNative and Flutter from the perspective of an app owner is that ReactNative is easier to manage because it is built on a more common language – JS – and more teams work with ReactNative rather than Flutter.
3 Low-code app alternatives for mobile development
There is one more option for designing a mobile app, but it is only appropriate for certain company concepts. It’s called low-code development, and it’s a method for developing apps faster by eliminating as much hand-coding as feasible. Microsoft PowerApps and Zoho Creator applications are examples of low-code platforms. It is still necessary to know how to code, but the time required is substantially reduced.
As you can expect, low-code development limits the functionalities of generated apps because developers can only build what is pre-coded by the platform they are utilizing.
Some sectors, however, may profit from this method. Accounting and various record-keeping firms, for example, can provide basic accounting solutions. These apps are quite simple, similar to Excel sheets, but with a more user-friendly layout.
Do you require anything more advanced in terms of logic and in-app experience? Then these low-code platforms might not be for you.
Still not sure which direction to take with your product development? Visit ronasit.com for more info!
