Introduction to Cross Platform Mobile Application Development

This article will introduce cross-platform app development, its advantages, and disadvantages, so you can decide whether you want to deep dive into this specific domain or not. Before going on to the main topic let’s have a brief introduction about what is android and IOS. 

Overview :

• The last few decades were completely for the evolution of technology in various fields, 90s mobile phones were considered a luxury, but now they have turned to our basic need because as the evolution of technology turned almost everything digital from managing payments to taking doctor’s appointment, all you need today is a smartphone, and you can do everything with ease. Apart from the growth of technology, even the pandemic itself shifted a lot of the workforce on smartphones as everyone is going through online study and work from home, smartphones are the key for communication. 
• All these facts and figures are enough to prove the power and need of smartphones, so it’s not about smartphones only, the main heroes of this blockbuster story are Mobile Applications. 
• Today we have a mobile phone app for everything whether you want to order food or submit assignments, apps are the core of smartphones so is mobile app development. 
• Today smartphones either have an android operating system or iPhone Operating System, Android is an open-source operating system for mobiles which have more than 80 percent market share while IOS is an operating system for mobile, developed and owned by Apple Inc. and have around 15 percent market share.

Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development :

• Android and IOS are the two main operating system platforms for mobiles and application development are different for both platforms as they are completely different operating systems. 
• Those developers who develop applications for the Android operating system are called Android Developers. Those developers who develop applications for iPhone operating system are called IOS Developers. 
• Those developers who develop applications for the Windows operating systems are called windows Developers. Due to this variation in an operating system, the problem of compatibility arose for developers and this problem is sorted with the concept of Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development or Hybrid Mobile Application Development. 
• If you designed and developed an app for android then you have to again develop the same app according to the IOS platform, this mess and extra effort are reduced with the help of cross-platform development.
• The mobile application development where the developed application is compatible with more than one operating system, this process is termed as the Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development or Hybrid Mobile Application Development.
• The main languages for android application development are Java and Kotlin, while swift is the main language for iPhone application development. Now if you are clear with the term Cross-platform App Development the next thing which you need to know is what are the advantages of cross-platform development and how it increases the efficiency and productivity of your app development.

Advantages of Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development :
The main advantages of Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development are mentioned below as follows.

1. Code Reusability –
   The code written once works for all the platforms, so you don’t have to write different code for another platform. Just write the code once, and you are ready to go.
    
2. Production Cost –
   While developing the same app for different platforms, different technologies are required which increases the overall production cost of the application, so you just need a single technology to get your app completely developed in Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development.
    
3. Faster Development –
   As the lines of code are going to be reduced and the many processes will be replaced by single-core process all this will result in more efficient and faster app development.
    
4. Uniform Design –
   One of the best advantages of Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development is that while developing the same app for different platforms, many times developers have to compromise with some design or functionality because the same component is not available for a different platform, this issue is resolved by Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development and the app remains same for all the users from different platforms.
    
5. Maintenance –
   As we have a single code base then you don’t have to maintain more than a single code base which helps in maintaining code and debugging. This makes the entire maintenance process smooth and easy.

Disadvantages of Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development :
There are following disadvantages as follows.

1. Features –
   While a new feature is introduced to IOS or Android it takes more than expected time for the same feature to provide functionality for Cross-Platform Mobile Applications because only those features which can be compatible with all platforms will be introduced.
    
2. Design –
   While Designing any Cross-Platform Mobile Application, the developer has to consider exceptions to both the platforms which becomes a constraint for the developer’s creativity and makes designing a difficult task.
    
3. Performance –
   Cross-Platform Mobile Applications possess less performance than native apps because of integration issues many a time they need third party apps for providing functionalities.

Future Aspect :
The Community of Cross-Platform Developers is getting bigger and better day by day which means the future of Hybrid Development is really very bright and if drawbacks of this technology will be removed in the future then a huge shift from android development or iPhone development to Hybrid Development will be observed. So we can finally conclude that, Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development could be considered as the future of mobile app development because it is welcomed by the community of developers and Hybrid is a creative and amazing field which every developer should explore at least once and if you are new to development then Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development is the best thing to start your development journey with.