Future of Cross Platform mobile development

cross platform mobile application development

Developers find it extremely daunting to code for particular platforms, it becomes more so when cross platform apps are being developed. Earlier the solely dominant App Store acted as the main concern of developers. However, with worldwide traction being gained by Android, it has also become a dominant force in the world of mobile OS. This has led to apps being written for the platform which are then ported to iOS. To gather large fan bases application developers are thus targeting a wide range of platforms; they are looking to create solutions that will be adaptable on several platforms so that most people can use them on the go, no matter where they are.

An application has two main goals- either acquiring many customers or delivering the best quality engagement within the target market. Since the audience being catered to is huge and uses a variety of platforms like Android, iPhone, Windows, etc, the design needs to be done for multiple platforms using cross platform development.

Advantages

With more platforms being covered, more people can be reached. With stiff competition between iOS and Android, smartphone users are increasing every day. Thus greater market potential can be tapped into through development of apps that run on both the platforms. With larger fan base, it becomes easy to market as well, since there is no need to create niche messages so that just a particular set of people can be catered to. Various media as well as generalised messages can be used for the marketing. In fact, with this, maintenance as well as deployment of changes becomes easy. Any update will be immediately synced across all platforms and devices. Furthermore, some particular tools make it easy to handle a single developer team that works on one multi-platform app as compared to various teams that work on several platforms.

Despite various platforms, by virtue of a single code that runs on all, the overall feel, design and look of the app is maintained. In fact, by using various tools, the coding can be done easily in HTML5 which can then be converted for various mobile platforms, essentially employing resources that you are familiar with. In fact, instead of looking for specialized developers any good developer with good knowledge of HTML5 will suffice. This further helps in the reduction of development costs.

Disadvantages

The greatest challenge for cross platform mobile development is that the various system configurations have to be kept in account. Another huge problem is keeping track of the varying resolutions in different devices. With various mobile versions coming up every day, it may be hard to keep track of the shifting resolutions. There are several tools that can make development easy but when custom designing the application, the difference between languages and tools of APIs of each platform may be hard to overcome. Another problem is that while designing such apps, a developer has to look at the common factors, ignoring the flexibilities and benefits that are provided by each platform. In fact, testing of such apps may turn out to be a more complicated process.

It might prove to be difficult to decide on the platforms that need to be focused upon due to the diverse nature of applications and expanding user bases. The features as well as goals of the app can help you decide whether you want to go for cross platform mobile apps or not. You can even take the help of a variety of tools available over the internet to make this development process easy for you. Some of the popular tools are MoSync, Appcelerator, Whoop, RhoMobile, Widgetpad, Xmarine, PhoneGap, DHTMLx Touch, FluidUI, etc which can help you in your endeavour.

You can get in touch with a cross platform mobile development company who can help you develop apps which are stable, scalable and secure.