Have you ever faced such situation where you wake up in the middle and think to yourself- “how can I make improvements?” Well, I can easily relate to that feeling, after all even I am a businessman. No matter what business you own, it is very important for you to make strides that will take your company to the next level. The current market scenario has gone through a great of deal of upheavals with technological disruptions to back up the power of smart marketing, to a great extent. Such an environment is thrilling for entrepreneurs to survive and thrive with nerve-wracking challenges and rewarding outcomes.
Well, you’ve come to the right place. As the following post will definitely help you in making an informal decision.
App development is at peak
Smartphones are getting activated than babies born every day due to which mobile app development is at its peak! In fact, it would be no surprise if your 10-year old knows how to make use of fancy new iPad better than you do. So, if they can why not you! Yes, it’s time for you to get business on board and have its own mobile app. Now of course, if your company specializes and interacts with a niche audience mostly offline, then you don’t really need a mobile app but otherwise, you definitely need to create one. For example- If you are a manufacturer of caps that go on toothpaste tubes, then creating an app wouldn’t do much for you.
At present, our lives have become ever more synched across all our digital devices, for many businesses having a mobile app is a great way of connecting them to their target audience. For example, if you are running a restaurant. Do you expect your customer to look up for your number to make reservations? No! They will hop on your mobile app and see what times are available and book the table.
Now as a businessman, navigating the mobile app development landscape can be quite tricky and scary as it means a huge investment in terms of time and money. You hear talk of iOS, Android, Symbian, WebOS, and people ask you if you’re going native or with web technologies which direction to take with your mobile app development? Well, there is no right answer or correct path rather pros and cons to each path which you will need to evaluate against your specific business needs.
Possible options to consider….
- Native apps- The term “Native” means building an app in a device’s native programming language. For Apple iOS devices Native means Objective-C and For Android it is Java. Native apps, in general, are typically fast, reliable and can access all the bells and whistles of the device’s hardware (camera, accelerometer, compass, etc). Due to this increased performance, mobile games are usually built as native apps. It also means, though, that your app is tied to the platform it is built for. An iOS app, for example, won’t run on an Android device without first re-coding the entire app to Java.
- Web apps- A web app, in general, is a website that can be easily accessed from your device’s mobile browser, but the site is made to resemble an application rather than a website. In fact, it’s purpose is more functional, i.e. it usually offers a utility or service rather than a straight-up website which is often more informational. A web app can be accessed by any mobile device that comprises of a browser in it. And because it is browser-based, not all of the device’s hardware features can be tapped into. So in order to produce more engaging and interactive experience, HTML5 technologies (i.e. HTML5/CSS3/Javascript) are increasingly being used to take advantage of the advanced features offered by this new specification.
- Platform-specific Web App- This is also a web app which is specifically designed for certain mobile devices. Yes, I am talking about smartphones running iOS or Android. Here less focus is placed on how the app looks on all mobile devices, and an emphasis is placed on making the web app look like a native app as much as possible.
- Hybrid App- Many people argue that hybrid apps and native apps are all the same. Whereas in the actual scenario, they are entirely different. A hybrid app is made using web technologies wrapped in a platform-specific shell that allows the app to be installed just like a native one. PhoneGap is an example of one of the frameworks that allow you take a web app and turn it into a native app for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows 7, WebOS, Symbian and more. The hybrid frameworks typically have APIs as well which allow you to access the device’s hardware and features that are locked out from the browser (camera, accelerometer, contacts, etc).
Wrapping it up
At first, you may think that choosing a reliable hybrid app development company is the way to go. After all, it seems to offer the best of both worlds, isn’t it! But wait a minute, each direction has its own pros and cons. For example:
Native offers Better performance (at least for now), which means snappier animations, transitions, and faster load times. The performance difference between native and web apps is even more pronounced on slower devices (e.g. iPhone 3G running iOS4). Whereas performance issues with Web are becoming less of an issue as mobile browsers become faster and their Javascript engines keep improving. So it thoroughly depends on your situation.