Understanding Mobile Apps and its types

When we talk about app development, its usually about developing app for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Mobile applications are increasingly playing a vital role in business with a larger customer base as well as workforce relying on the convenience of access on-demand to information & solutions.

The time spent per day on mobile devices has increased tremendously through these years. We are spending more time online than with any other devices. The maximum time spent on mobile devices is in using apps.

In today’s world, mobile apps have become of high importance. Whether you use a mobile phone, tablet or other smart phones, you have all the information right there.

Today, the first thing that customers do to search for a product or a service is to go online. So, no matter what your business is, a mobile app can help you get and retain customers. Your business will make a good impression if its available online, and have an app that users can download to their devices.

Android and iOS are the leading Operating Systems used in devices like phones and tablets. The apps are categorized in two parts:

• Native Apps
• Hybrid Apps

Native Apps:

Apps which are built for a specific operating system are well known as Native Apps. For example, Android apps is developed using Java, Windows, C++ etc. On the other side, iOS (iPhone/iPAD) apps uses XCode/Objective C, etc. Developing native apps is very expensive and time consuming.

Hybrid Apps:

Hybrid apps (cross-platform development) make it possible to embed HTML5 apps inside a thin native container, combining the best elements of native and HTML5 apps. The biggest advantage of developing hybrid app is consistent, cross platform UI that is compatible with most devices. The development is less expensive as compared to native app development.

In the last few years, several alternatives have become available to reap the benefits of cross-platform development without sacrificing the user experience or access to native APIs. Two of such platforms are Xamarin and React Native.

Conclusion:

Though Native apps are the best when you speak about user experience and performance, its development cost and time are very high. On the other side, hybrid apps are trending now a days as they are cost and time effective and moreover, the user experience and performance has reached to a level which is as good as the native app – thanks to newer technologies like React Native.