Concise Guide to Explore Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks

Welcome to the digital age of mobility and connectivity! Every enterprise tends to leverage the benefits of mobile app development for driving growth and improving its services. As many as 100,000 apps are released every month between Google Play Store and Apple App Store across the world. However, it is necessary to consider some factors before jumping on the app bandwagon.

As an entrepreneur or a C-Suite executive, you always want to reach a huge audience through a mobile app or a business website. You can opt for a custom Android, and iOS application to serve this objective, but, the cost of native app development can hold you back. Here, cross-platform app development comes into the picture by offering a cost-effective solution to build an app quickly.

In this post, we will understand the concept of cross-platform app development and its business benefits. Thanks to evolving technology, we have many frameworks available to build cross-platform mobile apps. We will dig deep into five popular frameworks to assist you to find the right option for your company. Sounds interesting? Let’s begin with the definition.

What is Cross Platform App Development?

It is an innovative programming approach for developing mobile apps that can run on multiple platforms like Android and iOS. Cross-platform apps need a single codebase and they would fit every platform and device to give the same performance. This approach is cost-effective and assists you to get a feature-rich app in a relatively short time.

It is, however, necessary to select a robust and advanced framework to build a user-friendly and fully functional app that can give a native-like experience. Let’s understand the points of difference between native and cross-platform app development processes before delving into popular frameworks.

Differences between Native and Cross-Platform App Development

Both native and cross-platform development are evolving rapidly to meet various business challenges and market trends. Native app development focuses on the target platforms like Android or iOS while generating a competent design for a respective platform. Whereas, cross-platform development emphasizes making an app that covers many end devices.

Here is a table of differences for native and cross-platform apps.

Cross-platform applications are easy-to-maintain with a single codebase. Here are some of the top frameworks for developing cross-platform apps.

Popular Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks

Flutter

Google’s Flutter framework is a highly popular and convenient option to make cross-platform applications. It offers a native-like experience without compromising the performance of an app. As an efficient tool for mobile app development, Flutter has all features available for ensuring rapid app development and high compatibility with various OSs.

Features

• Reactive Framework- It enables developers to get rid of manually updating the UI contents.
• Widgets- It assists developers to give a native-like look and feel in the app for both Android OS and iOS
• Graphic Engine- This inbuilt engine eliminates the need of creating different interfaces for Android and iOS
• Hot Reload- It facilitates mobile app developers to see how the application is changing as they modify the code.

React Native

Facebook (Now Meta) has built this open-source UI framework. It is based on the JavaScript library React and assists app developers to develop natively-rendered cross-platform applications from scratch. It was developed in 2015 and has remained one of the top choices for developers to build customized mobile applications that can run well on both Android and iOS.

Features

• Fast Refresh- It enables developers to see all the changes in React components
• Flipper Integration- This built-in integration is available in React Native version 0.62 and higher to debug Android and iOS apps
• React Primitives- These components render to native platform’s UI components to make the app’s UI responsive

Ionic

Released way back in 2013, Ionic is useful for making hybrid apps. It is an open-source UI toolkit with a combination of native and web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. It has integrations for other frameworks like Vue, React, and Angular to build hybrid apps for mobiles and desktops.

Features

• Cordova Plugins- They provide developers with access to inbuilt features of mobile devices including flashlight, GPS, and camera
• Ionic Studio- It is Ionic’s IDE designed for making and prototyping applications without much coding
• SaaS UI Framework- It is useful for mobile OS and offers multiple UI components for developing tailored applications

Xamarin

Microsoft owns and supports this platform. As an open-source app development framework, Xamarin uses the C# programming language in the .NET framework to build apps for Android, iOS, and Windows.

Features

• .NET BCL- It is also known as Base Class Library and it has a large collection of classes with a range of useful features.
• Forms- Xamarin.Forms enables developers to utilize platform-specific UI elements for their apps across various operating systems.
• Compiled Bindings- It improves data binding performance in Xamarin.Forms.

PhoneGap

Apache Cordova has built this framework to enable app developers to work with various technologies using a single code base. As an open-source tool, PhoneGap is capable of building apps by using CSS, Web APIs, and JavaScript. Usually, PhoneGap applications are lightweight because all the files stay in either a local director or on the cloud.

Features

• Cordova Plugin- It is useful for making AR-powered apps
• Enterprise-level Framework- It gives integrated market support to developers with a plethora of features

It is fair to mention that cross-platform apps are highly beneficial for modern enterprises. Let’s go through these business benefits in brief.

Benefits of Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks

Here we mention some of the top benefits of cross-platform application development frameworks.

Maximum Reach

You can deploy cross-platform apps on multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, and the web. It enables you to reach a wider audience with a single app.

Reduced Cost

Thanks to a single codebase, it is possible to make an app that can run on both Android and iOS. It enables you to save a significant amount on app development costs.

Easier Maintenance

Cross-platform apps are easier to maintain and deploy than their native counterparts. It is because developers can upgrade the app using a single codebase and then deploy it to all platforms at once.

Cloud Integration

These apps can be easily integrated with cloud-based services. This allows businesses to take advantage of the scalability and flexibility of the cloud.

Faster Time-to-market

Cross-platform apps are quick to build and deploy as compared to native apps. They are easier to customize than native apps also. As a result, you can get a quick time-to-market.

Why choose us for Cross-Platform Development?

As a leading mobile app development company, we build sophisticated and user-friendly cross-platform apps using React Native, Flutter, Xamarin, and Ionic frameworks. Our experienced consultants can handle your app project from the beginning and an in-house team of expert developers considers all the aspects for making your app successful.

We assist startups and SMEs to leverage the benefits of technological advancements by making innovative and future-ready apps at competitive rates. Our user-centered approach and focus on the quality of apps have made us a trusted mobile app development partner across the world.

Do you want to know more about our services? Just email us at info@silvertouch.com and we will get back to you.

FAQs on Cross-Platform App Development