Cross-platform mobile app development is not a new term in the present mobile app development paradigm. No doubt, mobile has become an indispensable part of daily life – be it for personal usage or business purpose. It has become more relevant to BYOD’s growing trend (Bring Your Own Device) in corporate culture, which mix up a personal mobile device with business need. There comes the cross-platform mobile development as a viable solution.

As the organizations look forward to engaging their employees in mobility, developing corporate mobile apps to access business apps and data is a common culture. The first point of concern here is that the mobile app must support different kinds of mobile devices in various networks and operating systems. So, cross-platform mobile app development comes as the pertinent solution here.

What is a Cross-platform app development?

This means the mobile app development will be done so that codebase would be valid for all kinds of operating systems. This could be based on native platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, etc. Otherwise, it could be initially developed on a standard framework and sent to native platforms as per requirements.

There are some of the best tools for cross-platform mobile developments in the market. Not to mention, Cross-platform mobile development helps to reduce development cost and effort many times with its own advantages. However, it has some drawbacks as well. We will discuss those in later sections.

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Why do we need a Cross-platform mobile development?

Today ‘mobility’ and reachability are the critical terms of success in eCommerce. So, it has left organizations in glitches when it comes to select the mobile application development platforms. Your app must support all the native platforms like Android, Windows, iOS, etc. So, opting for cross-platform mobile development is the best answer for this. Moreover, taking such a decision at the initial stage reduces the development cost and boosts the marketing target. To explain more, we can figure out the points from two aspects:

-Technical

-Marketing

Technical aspects

It is easier to maintain and deploy a single codebase for multiple platforms from a technical angle. Furthermore, the codes are reusable, so even in the case of upgradation on a particular platform, no need to change the entire code.

-Since the codebase is unified, it becomes easier for developers to release the app in lesser time.

-From the UI perspective, a single codebase approach or cross-platform mobile app development provides better uniformity in look and feel irrespective of mobile platforms or devices.

-cross-platform mobile development reduces technical complexities and needs of resources if we consider tools like Appcelerator. Also, Cross-platform mobile development needs expertise in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and HTML5.  So, it is not very difficult to find good coders in these skillsets.

-From the testing point of view, cross-platform mobile development saves the testing budget. For unit testing, you need to write common code. So, it's like the ‘write once and run anywhere' principle.

Marketing aspects

-Cross-platform mobile development provides greater market potential. Such mobile app can be easily deployed on iOS, Android, or other platforms at a time. So, it makes it easy for the business to reach a large number of customers within a short period and less investment without extra efforts.

-Cross platform mobile development gives reduced development cost.

-Cross-platform mobile development is ideal for B2B apps and process automation apps, where deployment timeline and resource utilization are essential factors.

What are the different types of Cross-platform mobile development?

Mainly there are two approaches followed for Cross-platform mobile development:

-Native Cross-Platform Apps development

-HTML5 Hybrid Cross-Platform Apps development

Native Cross-Platform Apps

The default development framework for creating mobile apps is SDK (Software Development Kit), which comes with mobile operating systems. Besides, specific or rather, the type of mobile apps supports preferred programming languages. For example, Apple-based apps developed using the iOS platform use Objective-C and Swift as preferred languages, whereas Java is the supported language for Android apps. Hence, apps developed using the official SDK and preferred languages are known as native apps.

But when we need to use those apps across multiple platforms, which means developing cross-platform apps, the way out is using SDK provided APIs in a modified form. As the SDK provided other programming languages do not support APIs, third-party vendors develop customized APIs on top of the native SDKs, supporting multiple operating systems. Hence, a single code base is used for cross platforms.

Usually, different frameworks are used for creating native cross-platform apps. Some of the popular ones are -

• Xamarin
• Titanium
• QT
• Appcelerator
• RubyMotion
• NativeScript

HTML5 Hybrid Cross-Platform Apps

Mobile apps deal with two parts –

-GUI

-Backend web services which hold business logic

However, for most mobile apps, 60% of the code deal with GUI applications, which primarily depend on HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. Any mobile operating systems have advanced web browser-based component in their SDKs. By leveraging this web browser and rendering the user interface along with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, programmers can develop mobile apps that use a native framework and a web view that is executed using HTML and JavaScript.

This type of mixed app is known as the HTML5 Hybrid app.HTML5 hybrid mobile apps are cross-platform apps. However, such apps render the user interface, which uses an embedded web browser, leveraging HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Popular hybrid cross-platform frameworks

• Cordova 
• Phone Gap
• Trigger.IO
• Ionic Framework 
• Telerik Platform.

Challenges associated with Cross-platform mobile development

Though there are multiple advantages of Cross-platform mobile app development, you cannot avoid the flip sides. Moreover, when considering the Cross-platform mobile app development for your mobile app, these points must be taken care of to avoid future drawbacks.

· Diverse screen layouts

Unified codebase helps to save redundant effort, but if we consider Android and iOS screen layouts, they are significantly different. So, designing and then fitting an app in both the layouts with a single codebase is quite a task.

· Complexity in platform integration

When dealing with an eCommerce app, it’s not just all about UI solution. You need to integrate your app with data storage, notification settings, financial gateways, and many more. So, when we are juggling between multiple platforms, it becomes complex in terms of integration.

· It's an identical operation which matters, not the identical look of the app

The main goal of the Cross-platform mobile app development is to leverage identical functions of the app across all mobile platforms. So, if we stress on identical UI of the app, it is possible that some of the functionalities can be missed in some platforms. So, need-based customization options should be opened even if the single codebase is used for Cross-platform mobile app development

· HTML5 Hybrid Cross-platform mobile apps consume more battery

HTML5 based mobile apps use advanced features like gradients, which consume significant computer memory. So, HTML5 Cross-platform mobile apps consume more battery compared to native cross-platform apps and native apps.

·Frequent upgradation of mobile SDK

Since the mobile operating systems are evolving every year, mobile vendors need to add new features in the cross-platform SDK, which is also within short notice. Thus it becomes a lot of work for them and effort from the developers' end as well.

Final thoughts:

As the number of smartphone users is expected to cross the 5 billion-mark by 2019, it has become essential for businesses to move into cross-platform mobile development from native app development. However, proper evaluation of the app functionalities and selecting appropriate tools is necessary before embarking on the new journey.