The rapid increase in mobile application development has been fuelled due to the immense popularity of the mobile apps. Different mobiles have different platforms and different operating systems (OS) such as iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry, to name the few mainstream ones.
Mobile app developers strive continuously to make flawless apps for their respective platform and operating system. With the launch of new devices and platforms at an ascending rate, the ‘trials and tribulations’ for the developer community has also increased at an ascending rate. After all, every end- user wishes for an app of the top class. This fact has given room for what we nowadays popularly call the cross-platform development.
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Keep Your Apps Crossed
With Cross-platform mobile app development, code written once can run on multiple platforms and devices. Enterprises are tempted by the fact that cross-platform can incorporate a comparatively large number of audience. Whether the user has an android phone or an i-Phone, is no longer the concern when developing apps over cross-platform technology.
One development team can build applications for the whole mobile app development department, irrespective of platform. A common programming code for all platforms and operating systems ensure faster development, which consequently leads to cost-effectiveness. Since you do not develop apps separately for different platforms, a lot of time, money, and energy is saved.
Another beneficial aspect of cross-platform development is the consistency in design, especially look and feel of the app. Programmers have to scratch their brains additionally to make a uniform look and feel across various platforms and operating systems. With cross-platform development, this overhead can be avoided altogether.
Marketing becomes considerably easy with cross-platform app development. When your audience is large, your reach is large. Your message is liable to reach and consequently influence a greater number of people. Also, since you are not tied to a particular platform, you can have more generalized advertisements independent of the medium.
(Do Not) Keep Your Apps Crossed
Cross-platform mobile app development has benefits of its own. It, however, is not appropriate in each and every case. The choice of this technology largely and fairly depends upon your requirements. If your requirement is a simple application without graphical and network overheads, going cross-platform is the best thing to do. But if performance is of utmost importance to you, especially when you want the application to run on several devices and its size and feature requirements demand interminable scalability, going native may be considered more beneficial than cross-platform.
Some applications require a quick prototype developed and launched on multiple platforms. Going cross-platform helps in this case due to its faster and cost-effective development. For example, you are developing an application that is promoting some particular cause or event that would expire someday.
There are cases in which user interaction is limited in the app. Limited user interaction means simpler user interface, and simple user interface means little scrolling and swiping. Going cross-platform is ideal in this case.
Some of the apps, usually those dealing with complex data, interact with hardware devices. Going cross-platform will not only be cumbersome, but will also lead to inflexible platform integration and limited user interaction.
Some applications require calls to the Application Programming Interface (API). For such cases, cross-platform will result in a lot of difficulties due to the difference of tools and technologies, and the languages associated with the respective APIs.
Cross-platform has common features associated with different platforms and devices. Each platform, however, provides a feature or a flexibility of its own. Going cross-platform results in the loss of a special feature or the flexibility of a platform at the hands of a common feature. So, before choosing the cross-platform mobile app development platform, make sure that the application that you require needs a common feature or a specific feature associated with a specific native platform.
It may so happen that an idea came to your mind like a flash of lightning! You want to quickly work upon it and develop the app, market and form a user base. Going cross-platform serves the purpose for the time-being but when complexity increases and your app demands more in terms of performance and flexibility, you may decide to abandon the cross-platform and take up the native path. This approach may, however, have risks and disadvantages of its own.
Conclusion
Mobile app development has three options: Native, Cross, and Hybrid. Our consideration and discussion was about Cross-Platform mobile app development. As a matter of fact, the three strategies exist because they have something to offer to the process of mobile app development which the other two, whatever they might be, are not capable of offering. The most important thing to realize is the requirement of your enterprise, based on which the appropriate strategy must be chosen.
Cross-platform is ideal when the mobile app you are building is simple, without any interaction with complex data, APIs or hardware or devices. Since you can quickly prototype it and launch it across multiple platforms for the targeted audience, ensuring speedy development in a cost-effective manner, you can gain vast profits in a short time, letting your enterprise achieve grand success.
Cross-platform mobile app development may be an option or a necessity; it completely depends upon your requirements and goals.
