Every aspect of our daily life can be managed through a mobile application. All kinds of purchases and payments of services, for example, can be done from applications installed on your mobile devices that make people's lives much easier today. In the midst of such a hectic and busy reality, users need fast and powerful platforms.
So we have to talk about the development of mobile applications, one of the jobs with the greatest boom in recent years due to the consumption pattern of users on the Internet: more and more people prefer to browse from their mobile devices than from their computers. This has led many companies not only to have responsive websites but to develop mobile applications that allow them to approach customers in an optimized and efficient way.
How to develop a mobile app? You should definitely look for experienced software engineers and mobile app developers, who know how to evaluate the needs of your company and propose the best way to create the software you have in mind. Is an iOS app better? Or an Android app? Everything will depend on your business goals. Meanwhile, we explain the types of applications you can have:
Types of mobile applications for your company
Native apps
When we talk about native mobile apps, we mean those that are created for a specific operating system. That is, when we develop an application, especially for Android or iOS, for example, it is a native app, which has been thought, designed and structured for each type of system.
Surely you have seen at some point that a certain mobile app is available only for Android or only for iPhone. Well, it is because the company started the development of its native application only for a certain operating system.
When developing a native mobile application, the mobile application developer uses the specific programming language for that operating system. Java is the language they use to build Android applications; Objective C and Swift are used to develop applications for iOS. For Windows Phone apps, C #, Visual Basic, and .NET are used.
The most important aspect of native mobile applications is that they will have optimal and exceptional performance, with the fewest possible errors, as they are built specially for an operating system. The app will adapt to the needs of the users without problems.
Surely you have come across a mobile app that works perfectly on Android but not on iOS. Ok, that doesn't happen with native apps. And that situation occurs when an app has been developed for one operating system and then the company tries to adjust it to another system.
Web applications
Unlike native mobile applications, in the case of web applications, it is not necessary to install any kind of file on mobile devices, since the application runs directly from the web browser. That is why it is capable of working perfectly on mobile devices with any operating system, be it Android, iOS or Windows Phone. "They are responsive websites that adapt to the interface of the device from which the user is browsing," said the CleverTap portal.
To develop mobile web applications, software engineers and developers generally use technologies such as HTML5, CSS and Javascript, which allow them to build platforms with great performance and adaptability to any type of mobile device. They also use Ruby or any similar language that provides flexibility in development.
One of the great advantages of developing a web application is that development costs are reduced since it is not necessary to make any kind of adaptation for a certain operating system: these applications simply perform well on any mobile platform.
What must be taken into account in the case of web applications is that although they will work in all browsers, between one browser and another there may be different functionalities available.
Hybrid apps
Hybrid apps, then, are a combination of native apps and web apps. Let's say it saves the best of both worlds: on the one hand, it is a mobile application that can be downloaded and installed on a mobile device, but that runs through web browsers.
They are very useful since, if a company develops a hybrid mobile application, this app will work correctly in any operating system in which it is installed, thus saving time and software development costs. There is less code to maintain and it also loads quickly when running in browsers.
You just have to pay attention to the following detail: no matter how well hybrid applications work, they do not reach the level of performance of native applications and may be a little slower since they do not have all the functionalities available in a native app.
Now that you know the different types of mobile applications that exist, you can evaluate the characteristics that each one has to choose the one that best suits your company. HTML5 and Java mobile applications are the most functional, but there is no better or worse application, each type simply has characteristics that more or less conform to a certain class of company and industry.
Do you want a mobile application for your business and you don't know where to start? At Rootstack we have the best team of software engineers and developers, we are prepared to create amazing mobile platforms for your company. Contact Us!
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