Understanding And Learning About Mobile Application Development

A process or act by which a mobile app is developed for mobile devices, such as:

• personal digital assistants
• enterprise digital assistants
• mobile phones

The software apps are designed to run on a mobile device, such as a tablet computer or smartphone.

Mobile apps and device platforms

There are two general platforms in the modern smartphone industry, namely:

1. iOS platform. It is a platform from Apple Inc. as the operating system powering up Apple’s famous line of iPhone smartphones.
2. Android platform. It is a platform from Google as an operating system used by:
   1. Google devices
   2. Many other OEMs

It is used to build smartphones and some other smart devices.

Both platforms have similarities when building apps, developing for Android vs. developing iOS involves using different SDKs (Software Development Kits) and different development toolchains. Apple uses iOS as an exclusive operating system for its own devices, but Google makes Android available to some other companies. The developers work on mobile app development for hundreds of millions of devices by targeting both platforms.

Alternatives to building mobile applications

There are four significant development approaches to building mobile apps:

• Cross-Platform Native Mobile Applications
• Native Mobile Applications
• Progressive Web Applications
• Hybrid Mobile Applications

Each approach to developing mobile applications has its own set of advantages. When selecting the proper development approach for the projects, the developers consider these:

• Desired user experience
• Computing resources
• Native features

Here is a list that requires by the app development:

• budget
• time targets
• resources

These are very crucial to maintain the application.

Native applications

Native mobile apps are written in the frameworks and programming language provided by the platform and make it run directly on the device’s operating system, such as:

1. iOS
2. Android

Cross-platform applications

The cross-platform native mobile apps are written in a variety of different frameworks and programming languages but are compiled in a native app running directly onto the device’s operating system.

Hybrid-web applications

Hybrid mobile apps are basically-built with the use of standard web technologies, namely:

• JavaScript
• CSS
• HTML5

These are bundled as application installation packages. Defiant to the native applications, the hybrid apps work on the web container, which provides the browser a bridge and runtime for native device APIs through Apache Cordova.

Progressive web applications

Progressive web applications offer an alternative approach to traditional mobile app development by skipping application store delivery and app installations. Progressive web applications utilize a set of browser capabilities, such as:

• working offline
• running a background process
• adding a link on the home screen of the device

These are web capabilities providing an ‘application-like’ user experience.

Now, if you are planning for mobile app development, the information explained here can be a big help for you to start. It is easier on your end to understand all these before you start developing a mobile app.