Things you should know about mobile development before going into business. (For Non-App developers)

When it comes to business, everything counts. Choosing an app development technology would greatly affect your business from all aspects. Prior building your development team, you need to know the difference between Native/react-native, Mobile Web and Hybrid. Once you make up your mind, start building your development team that possesses the required skills and experience (not the other way around).

On the other hand, when it comes to the potential success of your app; performance and user experience are the key. How many times did you trashed an app just after installing? Honestly, I do it all the time! The optimum choice here will be merely based on your business requirements.

1.  Web applications

“Web applications are websites with interactivity that feels like a mobile app. They run in browsers such as Safari or Chrome”. When on a tight budget, Web app development is a good option for platforms that doesn’t require complex functionalities 

Advantages:

•  Accessible through desktop, laptop, or mobile.
• Very low development cost compared to other apps.
• Fast and easy way to test an idea before investing a lot of money.

Disadvantages

• Relatively slow apps, as you always need a speedy internet connection.
• Dysfunctional in pushing notifications and loading on the home screen.
• Inaccessible through app stores.
• They lack complex functionalities and system features.
• Poor user-experience compared to other apps.

2.  Native apps

“The native app is a smartphone application developed particularly for a single platform such as Android or iOS". Common languages Objective-C or Swift for iOS vs. Java or Kotlin for Android.

Advantages:

• Ability to provide optimized performance and to support latest technology compared to web apps.
• Accessible to many functionalities offered by mobile devices. Example, a camera, GPS, and a microphone.
• Excellent performance, as they are designed and developed for specific operating system.
• Catchy and unique display, especially when it comes to the icons and buttons.
• Independence of internet connectivity in most cases.
• Accessible to all the APIs and other features provided by the mobile platform.
• High efficiency and high quality apps.

Disadvantages:

• No single source code. In order to make an app accessible on iOS and android, two apps are required to be developed separately. However, the backend is the same for both versions.
• Higher development cost than Web and Hybrid apps.
• More team members required to build native apps.
• Time consuming development process, as two apps (IOS and Android) will be built and fixed simultaneously.
• Relatively difficult maintenance and bug fixing.

3.  Hybrid mobile apps

“It’s a combination of a native app and a web app, Hybrid apps work similar to a Web app but are installed to the device as a native app would be.”

Advantages:

• Less complicated and faster to be built than native apps.
• Good for testing ideas quickly with less money.
• One code base to develop android and iOS, unlike native apps
• Less maintenance required than native apps.

Disadvantages:

• Quite slower than Native apps.
• The user-experience with Hybrid apps are mostly outdated.
• The dependence on a third-party platform called “wrappers” for including Native features.
• Less interactive than Native apps.
• Less access to the Native operating system functionalities and sensors.

Now, in case your decision is excluding the web app and hybrid app development, you are infront of two options and the comparison between both is very controversial.

4. React Native

“An open source framework from Facebook, which brings the concepts from web development into mobile development. The development of these applications is done in JavaScript, which is a single code base, but the result is still a native application.”

Advantages:

• Android and iOS platforms are built using one shared code base, unlike Native apps.
• The time consumed to build apps in react-native is quite less than Native.
• The bugs are easier to be detected and fixed than Native apps, which has two separate source codes.
•  “Live reloading mechanism” that can be used to reload the app automatically each time the code is modified, without the need to build it manually. All modifications are displayed on the device where the mobile app is running. 

Disadvantages:

• Inefficient when it comes to complex user-interface, and apps that require high degree of customization or animations.
• React Native does not support all the APIs that are supported in Native app development.
• Uncertain long-term support; as Facebook could stop providing maintenance anytime. If there is a technical error in a React Native component, you will either have to wait for Facebook support or shifting into native code.
•  Native modules are usually required. “Native modules are basically code in native language which handles a specific native feature”. Push notifications and microphone are examples.

Conclusion

Choosing a mobile app development technology could be an overwhelming process. There is no absolute best or worst; it all depends on the nature of business. You need to have a clear vision about your business requirements, taking in consideration the proposed budget and deadline. The next step would be finding your tech partner/ team; which is overwhelming too..