November 2, 2020
Cross-platform apps have emerged as one of the most popular choices in the world of mobile app development due to the advantages they provide. In the technology-driven world today, there is a strong demand for apps without bugs. Quite naturally, businesses put in their best efforts to satisfy the customers with powerful apps without glitches. With enhanced user experience, businesses can get the opportunity of increasing revenue. Before you move ahead to the future of cross-platform apps, it is essential to understand what they mean for businesses.
Cross-platform app development refers to the creation and delivery of mobile apps that can function effortlessly on different platforms, such as iOS and Android. It requires a single codebase to develop cross-platform apps. Among the popularly-known cross-platform apps, Flutter and React Native from Facebook are common among the app developers.
Reasons to use cross-platform Apps
With cross-platform apps, you can develop applications across a wide range of platforms and the web. Apart from this, it allows businesses to enhance their user base as the apps focus on Android and iOS users at the same time. Here are a few things you need to know about cross-platform app development.
- Cross-platform apps create an experience similar to native apps.
- The concept of cross-platform apps is writing a single code and reusing it to minimize the cost of development.
- The maintenance of cross-platform apps is easy as it can run smoothly on different platforms once developed.
- Due to the presence of a single source code for varied platforms, the process of the development of cross-platform mobile apps is pretty fast.
- For companies looking forward to creating a uniform user experience, the agility of cross-platform apps is beneficial.
- You can integrate these apps with the cloud environment quickly.
- Compared to the cost of native apps development, the expenses of developing cross-platform apps is lower.
- The technical errors can be minimized in the development of cross-platform apps as it only requires HTML, CSS3, and JavaScript.
- As far as market penetration is concerned, the cross-platform apps function faster and provide all-round coverage.
- You can also reduce the cost of marketing as the apps are available on multiple platforms in the market.
Merits and Demerits of Cross-platform Apps
The rising demand of mobile apps can successfully bring new concepts in which the development of one app, which is compatible with all the prominent platforms is fast gaining popularity. Just like other applications, the cross-platform apps have their share of merits and demerits. Here is what you need to know about it.
Catering to the Demands of Users
Consumer expectations are growing higher every day, so it is natural for them to demand apps with smooth navigation and taking no additional storage space. When apps slow down during the performance, the first-time app users stay away from the situation immediately even it means a few technical bugs impeding the momentum, and you do not know if they are to return somehow.
Apart from the requirements of low storage and performance issues, there are innovative features that keep the customers interested for a long time, In a nutshell, the developers struggle to create apps as the inclusion of one feature interferes with the other. Moreover, working on multiple platforms can create endless struggle as keeping the apps uniform cross all the platforms emerge as a real challenge. It is here that the cross-platform apps, such as Flutter and ReactNative come to use. When it comes to the ease of developers, the cross-platform apps provide just what they need.
Fast Development
Cross-platform app development is one of the quickest methods of developing mobile apps and the use of single-source code can minimize the development time up to eighty percent to increase the speed of development.
Cons of Cross-platform Apps
Although the cross-platform apps are similar to the native apps in several respects, the latter is somewhat faster. Due to the cross-platform synchronization, the apps are a bit slow in speed. However, the differences in performance are not very huge, and in most cases negligible.
Restricted User Experience
iOS and Android apps are different in terms of navigation, lists, and buttons. As it forms on a single codebase, the cross-platform app development cannot maximize most of the native-only features, which can make the user-experience largely restricted.
Closing Thoughts
The mobile app developers are only likely to prefer the cross-platform apps due to ease of use and the streamlined experience it creates. Due to the less advanced technology of the past, cross-platform apps were hardly used in the past. However, the significant benefits of the cross-platform apps and the advancement of technology is gradually making the future of these apps brighter. As the cross-platform apps help in increasing the speed of the application and make it compatible with iOS and Android devices, it seems that the technology is here to stay. No wonder the development of cross-platform apps is one of those technologies that is here to stay in the long run.
