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A Guide on Cross-Platform Mobile App Development

A Guide on Cross-Platform Mobile App Development

Tuesday October 30, 2018,

4 min Read


The mobile market is an ever-growing market. It has been predicted by 2020, that the mobile app market is expected to grow & generate $189 billion in revenue. As long as mobile apps have been around, there has been a discussion of the best way to perform operations. Android or iOS, Hybrid or Native apps, it is clear that there are many different approaches to this task. That one approach, which has become the choice for numerous, is cross-platform development.

Now, What Is Cross-Platform Development?

Cross-platform mobile app development refers to the development of apps that can be used on multiple mobile platforms, such as Android & iOS. Using Cross-platform frameworks, a single app source code compiles into native code for different operating systems.

Cross-platform mobile app development permits companies to influence their resources by building a single app that only requires fewer adjustments for every device.

Why Choose Cross-Platform Way For App Development?

There are so many reasons that the world has adopted the cross-platform for app development and investing heavily in cross-platform app development. Let us take a close look over them...

Code Re-usability:

Cross-platform app development is the beneficial stage for mobile app developers when it comes to choosing the app development platform. The effort becomes easy by reusing the code. Now in place of repeating the same code between platform to platform, developers only have to write a code at once, which is then used to develop apps across diverse platforms.

This saves time as well as efforts of the app developers, which earlier used to go into repeating codes repeatedly according to different device's compatibility.

Cost-Efficiency:

Not at all like native and hybrid application development where organizations need to pay for the diverse tools and technologies, which are particular to the platform, when you put resources into cross-platform application development you should pay for a particular set of tools & technologies. In one time cost, you will get an app that functions on all the platforms.

Faster App Development Timeline:

Regardless of which website you are on, each article on the most proficient method to cut down the application development timeline accompanies the choice of putting resources into cross-platform app development.

Since the developers can reuse the code, it sets aside them less time to build up the application and consequently expands their go to market speed.

Easy Update Implementation:

There are plenty of platforms like; PhoneGap & Appcelerator, that make cross-platform extremely easy for developers to make changes on the go across all the different platforms.

Using Appcelerator, one can write codes in HTML 5 & then easily convert them for usage in different platforms.

This not only makes app development process simpler but also allows synchronization of updates in real-time across the platforms.

Uniform App Experience:

Using cross-platform app development, businesses can offer similar app experience to their users irrespective of what platform they are active on. An App that offers diverse experience from one device to another is pointed as a bulky app in no time.

The one who does not want to flow in the same app movement irrespective of how many devices they have switched, this uniformity is a great benefit that cross-platform app development comes with.

Greater Audience Reach:

Instead of spending in a native app development approach where brands usually develop apps for the single platform at a time when they go for cross-platform app development, they get access to many of audience that is present on both Android & iOS.

This allows them to access both the platforms' audiences at the same time, which automatically increases the app visibility and its revenue generating ability.

Some Important Tools For Cross-Platform Tools Are...

Xamarin:

One of the popular cross-platform tools is Xamarin, founded by the inventors of the cross-platform implementations MonoTouch & MonoDroid. Using C#, developers can easily write & reuse their code across various platforms. Xamarin also simplifies cross-platform processes, such as the creation of dynamic layouts for iOS.

Native Script:

A Bulgarian software development company, Telerik, developed the native script. The Native Script platform allows developers to use core JavaScript for building native mobile applications, which run on every single one of the mobile platforms: Android, iOS and Windows. With the help of NativeScript, app developers are allowed to develop the UI stack on a native platform by using the native UI components that enable an almost-native User-Experience.

Appcelerator:

It is an open-source framework that enables the process of native mobile app creation on platforms from single JavaScript codebase. Appcelerator engages the common JavaScript language for creating native & cloud-connected mobile apps.

Conclusion:

This was all that one needs to know before jumping into cross-platform mobile app development. We have given our best to apprise you of the best languages, frameworks, tools, and platforms that will help you in trying your hands in this landscape.