Here Is Everything You Need to Know About Cross-Platform Mobile App Development

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Platform-agnostic applications are all the rage these days. With the plethora of platform-specific releases and updates and an ever-growing inclination towards multi-platform usage, creating a single app that can work across them is undoubtedly a lucrative and necessary endeavor. 

As per Statista’s 2021 developer survey, around 42% of the global developers are working on cross-platform apps, with top frameworks like Ionic, Flutter, Xamarin, and PhoneGap being the choice of almost 73% of developers.

But before we get into the nitty-gritty of implementing cross-platform apps, let’s understand the what and why of cross-platform mobile app development.

What is Cross-Platform App Development?

Cross-platform mobile application development is a software development process where a common code base is used to develop applications that can run on multiple mobile operating systems, such as Android and iOS. The idea is to facilitate wider access to an enterprise’s application’s resources.

With a common code base, products developed on the same platform look and feel similar. A user gets a similar experience irrespective of their mobile device, which is precisely what enterprises aim for in the UX-centric economy. 

No wonder much of the credit for this approach and philosophy of mobile development goes to the proliferation of progressive web applications (PWAs), rapid mobile app development (RMAD), and SaaS solutions.

What are the Benefits of Cross-Platform Mobile App Development?

With a cross-platform all, regardless of the platform, mobile users experience a consistent interface with standard navigation, style sheets, visual appeal, and control. 

For Businesses, the benefits are many, such as

  • Single Team, Multiple Fronts: A cross-platform app development team usually works with a common codebase, making them highly efficient and economical. Plus, the entire team is always on the same page, unlike working in a fragmented setup.
  • Access and Reach: As mentioned earlier, access and reach are the two core goals of cross-platform mobile development. In the highly fragmented digital industry, enterprises can avail themselves of a larger and more lucrative user base by simply developing a single app that would work on multiple platforms.
  • Faster Development: Cross-platform frameworks help developers create apps for multiple platforms without having to use platform-specific APIs in the code. Furthermore, cross-platform applications are developed using modern and matured frameworks, which means they’re up to date with the latest design trends. Both these facets expedite the development processes and make them less time-consuming.
  • Code Reusability and Maintainability: All the source code, libraries, and APIs developed for one platform can be reused for other platforms. This practice reduces the amount of time and money spent on developing an app from scratch.

Cross-Platform vs. Native Mobile App Development

As opposed to platform-agnosticism exhibited by cross-platform apps, native mobile app development implies that each platform is coded individually for specific features and a user experience that is crafted specifically for each. Naturally, this approach offers the best user experience and tends to be more resourceful — precisely why 58% of the developers worldwide work on this model.

However, this approach also carries with it several drawbacks. Every change made to the native code must be separately released across all platforms, adding to the development time and cost. Also, this approach is not ideal for small or new businesses, as they would have difficulty taking on the additional cost, upfront investment, and risk involved in managing separate codebases and associated teams.

When Should You Consider Developing a Cross-Platform Strategy?

Cross-platform development is a cost-effective and necessary practice. It clearly exhibits itself as the future of mobile app development, and businesses are already upping the ante. That said, here are some scenarios where you must create a cross-platform mobile app.

You Know You Would Scale

A cross-platform mobile app will be the right choice if you have a fair idea of how much traffic you can expect the app to generate in the forthcoming period. This is because it will help you:

  • Avoid re-engineering a new codebase for each platform
  • Ensure a single-to-multiple solution that would deliver a unified, consistent experience for the user

You Know Your Customer Base is Scattered

Your cross-platform mobile app will be the optimal choice if you have a pretty well-defined customer base that is scattered across multiple platforms. For example, as an eCommerce brand, you wouldn’t want to miss out on a relatively small iOS user base when their average eCommerce transaction amounts to $32.94 — 3X the amount of those shopping on Android.

You Have a Good Development Partner

Cross-development can be extremely challenging considering that a number of issues such as performance inhibition, sub-optimal UX, challenging API integration, and debugging intricacies are bound to crop up at one point or another. Therefore, you should only embark on this development journey if you have a trusted and reliable development partner with ample experience in creating cross-platform mobile apps. 

Leverage Intellore’s Expertise to Ensure High-Grade Cross-Platform Mobile Apps

As a leader in enterprise mobile app development, Intellore’s cross-platform mobile app development strategies are built on the principle of simple design and easy implementation. This entails using leading industry frameworks (such as Flutter, ReactNative, Xamarin and Ionic) and technologies (such as PHP, NodeJS, ASP .Net Core, HTML5, CSS, jQuery Mobile, JAX, and Angular) that developers can leverage to seamlessly replicate the same app functionality on multiple platforms.

To know more about cross-platform mobile app development or to discuss your next project with our experts, drop us a line here.

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