The choice between native app development and cross-platform mobile app development carries considerable weight for companies providing product development services and businesses that seek these services. In 2022, statistics showed that about one-third of mobile developers use cross-platform tools, while the rest use native tools. From my experience, this choice directly impacts expenses, the time required for development, and the functionalities that can be incorporated into an app.
Since becoming open source and constantly upgraded by a thriving development community, cross-platform app development frameworks have been the go-to solution for developers seeking to streamline the app development process. But not everything is a piece of cake. In this article, I will explore the pros and cons of cross-platform mobile app development to help you understand when it is the best choice for your next project.
What Is Cross-Platform App Development?
Cross-platform mobile app development is the choice of developers who want to create a single application that works on multiple operating systems–usually Android and iOS. The first significant development in cross-platform mobile app development was the introduction of PhoneGap (now known as Apache Cordova) by Nitobi Software in 2008. Later acquired by Adobe, PhoneGap allowed developers to build mobile applications using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and deploy them across multiple platforms.
Since then, several other notable advancements have taken place in cross-platform app development. Today, Flutter, React Native, Xamarin, and Ionic stand out as prevalent frameworks chosen by developers.
Furthermore, a wide array of tools and services are available to simplify the cross-platform app development process. For example, Microsoft's Visual Studio App Center is a comprehensive resource suite specifically designed to support developers in building, testing, and deploying cross-platform applications.
Although there are many advantages, creating an app that performs optimally on various platforms can be challenging for developers because it requires optimizing the app separately for each platform. This could reduce its performance.
Pros & Cons Of Cross-Platform App Development
Due to its notable advantages, software development teams often opt for cross-platform app development. However, it may not always be the most suitable choice for a project due to its inherent disadvantages, outlined below.
Pros
Faster app development: Building cross-platform apps saves more time compared to two native apps that are built for different platforms. In particular native apps typically require twice the amount of time to develop cross-platform apps. There's no need for writing separate codebases and more specialized knowledge and expertise in platform-specific programming languages and frameworks. All of that is taken care of by the cross-platform app frameworks.
Reusable code: Tools and frameworks for cross-platform allow developers to access reusable components, libraries, and modules that can be replicated in different operating systems This is the powerhouse of cross-platform apps, as it can be used for multiple projects as well.
Increased market reach: With almost 80% of reusable source code, cross-platform app frameworks reduce the development cycle, creating room for rapid MVP development and iterations. This relatively short development timeline and access to different platforms allow businesses to release their apps faster and reach diverse audiences.
Reduced development costs: With cross-platform apps, there is often no need to hire single-platform developers, who are usually more pricey.
Simplicity: Cross-platform frameworks provide a unified development environment that simplifies the development process for developers to leverage single source code in building hybrid apps.
Cons
User experience: Cross-platform apps may fall short of delivering the same level of user experience native apps offer. That is because there are often limitations in access to or integration with native APIs. In some cases, developers will need to write OS-specific code to solve this challenge and create a better user experience.
Vendor lock-in: Vendor lock-in in cross-platform apps can arise from language compatibility challenges between target platforms. While platforms can offer support for multiple programming languages, there may be discrepancies in language availability across platforms when developing cross-platform apps. In other words, switching to an alternative platform becomes difficult if a cross-platform app relies heavily on a specific language or framework.
Integrations: The absence of native support for some services can affect integration into cross-platform apps. Developers may need to find third-party libraries or create custom wrappers to enable integration.
Feature availability: The timely adoption of new features introduced by Google and Apple in their Android and iOS platforms is a distinct advantage for cross-platform apps. Developers may face a drawback in this regard because they must wait for the integration of these updates into their chosen cross-platform framework.
Code quality and performance: Cross-platform frameworks often introduce an abstraction layer and rendering processes that work between the app's code and the native rendering engine. This additional layer may cause overhead and result in slower rendering compared to native apps.
When To Use Cross-Platform App Development
We can compare cross-platform app development and native apps to different architectural approaches in construction. Native app development is like constructing buildings using materials and techniques specific to the region. For cross-platform development, it is like creating structures that can be replicated in different locations using standardized components and methods.
This analogy explains why developers choose one over the other. But developers' choice of cross-platform apps is also based on the following needs:
- Quicker time to market
- Rapid prototyping
- Easier maintenance and updates across platforms
- Target diverse markets with varying platform preferences
- Launch less complicated apps
Summary
Developing cross-platform apps is a time-saving and efficient approach. However, customizing the user experience to meet the standards of each platform and, more importantly, the project targets requires extra care and commitment from developers.
As a result, entrepreneurs tend to jump on the mobile app bandwagon.
There, cross-platform app development lends a helping hand, and enable the companies to come up with seamlessly-performing apps that can run across various devices and platforms.
Android has Java and iOS has Swift as official programming languages to build apps.
Now, mobile app developers can make an API that acts as a bridge between the code base and the different OS.
It saves time and efforts of developers thereby reducing the app development cost.
The cross-platform apps require less time and resources as compared to their native counterparts.
The modern-day business world is very dynamic, and it takes a lot of innovative work to survive and thrive in it.
Here, cross-platform app development comes as the rescuer for the businesses as well as the app development companies.The concept of cross-platform development has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years.
Since 2020, businesses are looking for cost-effective ways to reach their target audience and provide them with the perfect platform.
As Bruce Lee once said, ‘Be water, my friend,’ you can utilize cross-platform apps in any of your projects, irrespective of the mobile OS.Therefore, it is time to dig deep and understand the dynamics of cross-platform app development in 2021.Benefits of cross-platform app development for businessesBesides its versatility, hybrid app development can prove to be a catalyst that would increase the ROI of your business.
Some of the significant benefits of including cross-platform apps in your business are:Straightforward implementationCross-platform app frameworks render solutions to developers, enabling them to make the code changes (if needed) quickly.
For example, with the help of a tool named Appcelerator, the developers can quickly write the codes in HTML5.
