Two ways of developing Mobile Apps

A Mobile App Developer can develop apps in two ways – Single Platform (aka Native) and Cross Platform.

Single Platform Mobile Apps are developed using Programming languages & Native SDKs provided by Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM etc for their respective Mobile platforms. Apps developed using these tools provide high performance, better user experience and tight integration with device’s hardware. Since the programming is done differently for iOS, Android, Windows Phone & Blackberry, same source code can not be reused. This results in spending equivalent cost in developing one app for multiple platforms and also requires maintenance to be done separately for each app (a new feature must be implemented in individual code base).

To reduce overall investment in making an app compatible to multiple mobile devices, few Cross Platform technologies have gained popularity that allow you to develop high quality Mobile Apps using HTML5, CSS & JS. The code is written once but app can run on multiple mobile platforms thus saving cost. Some of these technologies transform the web code to native code (Like Appcelerator Titanium) while others continue to run web code but provide integration with native device features using a set of Internal APIs (Like PhoneGap). However, there are some limitations posed by cross platform technologies.


Read about our experience of Cross Platform Mobile Development here.

Mobile App vs Mobile Web vs Hybrid App

Native Mobile Apps are most suitable for apps that are used on a regular basis, used for content creation, have complex workflows or calculations, need to access native functionality or processing such as SMS, GPS, Click to Call, Camera etc and importantly need offline capability i.e. users can use the app without internet connectivity. Native Mobile Apps offer better user experience and a great distribution & marketing platform to you via App stores.

Mobile Web Apps are most suitable for apps that are used for content consumption, don’t have complex workflows or calculations, don’t need to access major native functionality or processing and importantly don’t need offline capability i.e. users can use the app mostly online. Mobile Web Apps are instantly available to users (they are not distributed on App Stores) and content can be updated remotely without needing to publish updated version on App store each time.

Hybrid Mobile Apps are provide best of both of above options. Some part of the App can be kept Native Mobile App while other as Web App (still wrapped inside the Native App).

Steps for successful mobile app development:

Elan provides mobile application development services for all of the above.