Demystifying App Entrepreneurs Dilemma to Choose The Mobile App Development Platform

Startup entrepreneurs venturing into mobile app often struggle between the speed and agility. Startups have neither time nor the funds to cope with the long development cycles of a mobile app. As the consumer focus is drifting from what’s on the web to what’s in the app on a mobile device, a cutthroat competition to be first-to-market is initiated. If you are an entrepreneur willing to cut short the app development cycle and enhance time to market, you are lucky to have a few resources that will do so.

Entrepreneurs or CEO’s of startups should consider market invasion with the Minimum Viable Product, or an MVP, rather than entering the market with a fully-fledged robust app. It will allow you to collect data, gather feedbacks and analyze scope for further development.

Use cross-platform app development tools that empower you to code once and deploy on multiple platforms. Thus, instead of creating codes and building native apps for two separate platforms (Android and iOS), you have to code or build once and get two independent apps for both the platforms. The best idea is to penetrate the market with cross-platform apps and then replacing it with a native robust app. Here are a few points that will help elevate your understanding of the preferable platform for your MVP. 

Native or Cross-Platform App Development…It’s your take

It is obvious if the startup entrepreneurs looking for an opportunity to make an impact in the market are in a dilemma—whether to build an app in the native environment or introduce MVP through cross-platform app development.

An app entrepreneur has to focus on many factors to take such decision. App development skills of an in-house team, device functionality, security, offline capability, interoperability, targeted audiences, expected reach, etc. are some of the important factors.In the end, it is not just about the app, but it is about your approach and fulfillment of expectations. Nevertheless, before finalizing your decision, do consider a few of these points to choose the best platform for your mobile app.

The Technology was Different, then…Now It has changed

The Emergence of more capable devices: If apple has introduced a versatile range of devices having enhanced capability, Android has introduced a range of devices with windowing capacity (Remix Ultra Tablet). On the contrary, Microsoft after acquiring Nokia has introduced some great devices using full-blown Windows operating systems.

The Improved HTML5: Primarily the role of HTML was to present multimedia content on the web. On the contrary, resurfaced HTML5 came forth as a native framework for building entire offline apps. Features, such as the geolocation API in HTML5 endows developers to use the onboard GPS, further improving its usability and flexibility.

The Rise of Cross-Platform Tools: Previously it was kind of a compromise to develop an app using cross-platform tools. Subsequently, the latest generation of tools bridged the gap between the cross-platform and native apps. Now you can tailor the UI as well as address the performance issues by deploying codes similar to that of native applications.

Although it’s MVP,App Performance matters

• It is easier to browse mobile apps, feel 85% users preferring mobile apps to websites.
• 55% of users ditch mobile apps with problems like freezing, crashing, showing an error message, or apps with slow launch time.
• If an app fails to work for the first time, only 78% users will give it more than one try.
• About 48% of users dissatisfied with app performance will never download the app again.
• App ratings influence more than 84% user’s decision to download or remove the app.

With Native Apps you get

• Fastest, most reliable, responsive and intuitive experience for users.
• The enhanced flexibility of an app due to their ability to tap wider aspect of hardware functionality in a device, including camera, microphone, accelerometer, and touch gestures, etc.
• Capability to draw user attention using a push notification feature, which sends an alert every time a new content is published,again helping to increase the user engagement time.
• Ability to reshape promotional and loyalty strategies by utilizing Geo-location tagging.
• Ease to analyze the performance of the app or promotion/event with the help of user activity analysis

With Cross-Platform Apps you get

• Speed and efficiency in app development, leveraging one codebase and customizing it for multiple platforms
• Cost-effective app development unless the app needs a lot of customization.
• Easy and steady multi-edge cross-platform development strategy addressing your unique needs without increasing the development costs
• Easy app updating as it syncs naturally and instantly across multiple platforms and devices
• Similar UI performance as that of native apps as the user interface is rendered using native controls

Prefer Native App Development if:

1. You intend to develop an application having full access to the device’s hardware and functional capability.
2. Your application will be processing video, images or audios
3. You are planning to offer a fluid,highly responsive UI to users
4. You are ideating an app to furnish complex calculations by working with a high amount of data.
5. You want the user interface to imitate the same feel and look over multiple platforms.
6. You plan to deal with encrypted data in the app.

Prefer Cross-Platform App Development If:

1. You want to test and validate a simple business concept by developing a quick prototype.
2. You want to invade the market with a temporary app solution or a promotional app having a limited lifep.
3. Your application will have limited user interactions and a simple user interface for listing or displaying news.
4. Your application does not interact with device hardware/functions for speed and performance.
5. You have a simple application without heavy animation or graphics, including images, videos, and audio.
6. Your targeted audiences belong to a specific OS as if corporate applications wherein you are not interested in particular user interface following tricky guidelines of each individual platform.

Conclusion:

Every app entrepreneur has to understand the product first along with the targeted audiences. Knowledge of these two factors will definitely help you in making the right choice of technology as well as the platform. Cross-platform app development seems perfect for Minimum Viable Product or a prototype, which will help in determining the viability and sustainability of your product or an idea. In addition to that, corporate applications where high-performance is not a merit can be developed using the cross-platform technology.

Entrepreneurs depending on software performance to target a wider audience base and exceptional reach to users must confide in native app development. Nevertheless, you must prefer native app development technology for building complex apps, media streaming apps or apps with too much animation and graphic content.