An Experienced Custom Mobile App Development Company

What is Mobile Application Development?

Mobile application development (or mobile app development) is the development process of creating software applications for smart mobile devices; such as mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, digital assistants, and others. However, unlike in traditional bespoke software development, mobile app development companies ensure that they integrate features that take full advantage of the additional features that smart devices offer (such as touch sensors, accelerometers, and more) - while offering increased compatibility with such devices.

What types of Mobile Applications are most popular?

Two main types of mobile apps are highly in demand to be developed by a mobile app development company, due to the popularity of the Android and Apple iOS operating systems.

1. iOS Mobile Application Development

This is the development of mobile applications that can be run on Apple iOS smart devices. They can be built by a variety of programming languages or supported by different frameworks. This also includes hybrid multi-device mobile applications developed supporting not only use on iOS but also Android and other systems (such as Microsoft OS)

2. Android Mobile Application Development

The development of mobile applications that are made to use on any Google Android smart device. Many programming languages and frameworks are popular for such application development. The development of hybrid multi-device mobile applications supporting not only Android but also iOS and other systems is also included.

What do Native Apps and Hybrid Apps Mean in Terms of a Mobile App Development Company?

Native apps are mobile apps developed by mobile developers or mobile app development companies for only one specific device or platform maximizing all the features and uses of that operating system. What this means is separate mobile apps need to be built for each platform if built as a native app. As such only specific languages can be used to build these. Here are the most commonly used programming languages for Native apps.

Native iOS App Languages:

Swift: More modern, fast, flexible, stable, easy-to-learn, and evolving, may have compatibility issues with older iOS versions
Objective-C: Mature, stable, complex, lacks growth and flexibility

Native Android App Languages:

Java: One of the official programming languages for Android, stable and secure, but has some performance drawbacks

Kotlin: Current official programming language for Android, fast, simple, accurate, flexible, secure and stable, may have compatibility issues with older Android versions

Dark: One of the newest programming languages. Fast, simple, easy to use, and one of the best game development tools.

Hybrid Apps are mobile applications where a mobile developer or mobile app development company creates a core program with web application programming languages supported by cross-platform mobile app development frameworks and then gives a lightweight native outer layer or shell using a Native runtime. They use a mobile WebView object as it displays actually web content through a native shell. Many major mobile apps such as Twitter, Uber, Gmail, and more are made as hybrid apps. As only the outer shell is native, they can quickly be adapted to any platform, though they may not be able to attain full use of a device/platform’s features.

Hybrid Mobile App Programming Languages:

HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3: Most commonly used and versatile languages for cross-platform mobile app development

Python, C#, PHP, and Ruby: While less used, can be used quite flexibly with newer developments

Hybrid Mobile Application Development Frameworks:

Flutter: Open-source framework built by Google, uses Dart language for its single code-based backend. Uses its own engine to customize widgets and allows the use of a large range of Google plugins.

React Native: A very powerful framework that uses JavaScript to communicate with prebuilt functions to retrieve data and manipulate the user interface (UI)

Ionic Framework: Originally used Angular, but now supports React and Vue.js. A once really popular framework for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript language apps, but is less used now due to not being capable of implementing native plugins without transforming it into JavaScript.

Xamarin: An open-source .NET framework owned by Microsoft that uses C# as its base language.

Appcelerator Titanium: Open-source mobile application development framework that uses a single code base in JavaScript.

Quasar: Cross-platform app development framework that uses Vue.js and is compatible with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Flexibility and Agility

Unlike with fulltime employees, you have the independence to reduce or increase your developers hired through staff augmentation as you scale your project up or down. However, hiring with staff augmentation also allows you the agility to make changes in the stated scope of your project unlike with a Fixed price project model.

Commonly used Native Runtimes for Hybrid Apps:

Apache Cordova: Formerly named PhoneGap. An open-source native runtime that can be used for apps developed by HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Mature and popular, but a bit aging. Allows use of native devices such as camera and GPS
Capacitor: Cross-platform runtime toolkit by Ionic which while having the same facilities as Cordova is more modern, has enterprise support, and more tools.

A comparison of Native Apps vs Hybrid Apps

All in all, there is no exact right or wrong between native and hybrid mobile apps. Whether you should develop a native or hybrid app is your specific needs and wants. Speak about your specific requirements with your chosen mobile app development company to correctly identify if a native or hybrid app is most suitable for you.

Why Choose Era Biz as your Mobile Application Development Company?

Highly Secure

Our developers are vetted for security during the hiring phase and are all able to do secure mobile app development

Cost-Efficient

We strive to give you the best cost-to-quality ratio by keeping our tech hub offshore in Sri Lanka and ensuring our code is clean and efficient.

Extremely Experienced

We are a custom offshore mobile app development company with over 10 years of experience. As such we are able to provide accurate advice and great coding.

Agile Development Methods

Our developers use DevOps and Scrum combinations for Agile development ensuring that you have visible output in record time.

Multiskilled and Experienced Talent Pool

The developers in our teams are multi-skilled in many programming languages, development frameworks, and other technical skills. They are armed with high levels of experience in many mobile app development projects. This will help reduce the cost of hiring different developers for different skill sets.

Highly sensitive to Modern Technology

Due to our high sensitivity to modern technology and progressiveness in the face of change, we are able to offer the best mobile app development technologies in the markets as and when you require them.

Multilingual Team

We are a mobile app development company that is well-versed in English, as we not only test for English while hiring but also maintain an English-speaking environment within the organization. There are also a handful of developers who speak other international languages allowing us to translate.

Fill up the form on our contact us page to book your free appointment with us and discuss your mobile application development project needs.