“The Future of Mobile Apps” is the Future of Everything Now

With the dawn of every night, as you safely tug yourself to sleep, thousands of other men in every nook and cranny of the world are awake, busy and rapidly wracking their brains to unveil a whole new dais of mobile experience. And when you wake up the next morning, the world, as you knew it, has changed. Little by little, bit by bit, every morning there is something new in mobile technology that you have absolutely no clue about.

Our life is based on a myriad of applications all wonderfully gathered in our smartphone. Dependency to a limit that our lives switch on and off with a simple touch of a button, or a tap on a screen. Our closest secrets, darkest information, the good, the bad and the ugly everything is more a part of our smartphone than our bodily self. In this global metamorphosis of human behavior, mobile technology forms the centerpiece.

No one better understands this change of human behavior than the rising startups of this era. A fact to behold is that all major businesses now have a mobile app product up and ready before a formal setup of their business processes.

Another fact to behold is that out of many available technology stacks for mobile applications, choosing the right one can be as intricate as choosing the right wire to cut to defuse a bomb. One wrong move and your company could crumble to dust.

We understand this unavoidable yet critically important dilemma that a startup faces in its course to become a billion dollar company. Choosing the right technology stack for mobile app development can pave the path to where a company wants to go, who it wants to target and where does it see itself in the next four to five years.

I went through the long journey of discovering the top technology stacks for mobile app development and have congregated the following list:

Native Mobile App Development 

The decision to go for Native App Dev can be influenced by many factors:

1. Usage of device’s capabilities viz. camera, gps, accelerometer etc
2. Better performance & responsiveness of the app
3. Better esthetics of the app
4. Targeting a specific market, i.e., native Android, iOS market
5. If your app is a game demanding high graphics

iOS

iOS wins hands down when it comes to simplistic interface and superb user experience, so simple that it is common to see toddlers navigating the menus with ease. This is the prime reason why iOS is the operating system of choice for many developers. The compatibility is on all iPads and OS X devices.

There are over 1.6 millions iOS apps on iTunes. This number doesn’t quite justify the resplendence of the iOS platform. All iOS apps are very easy to manage and maintain through the iTunes interface. iOS is known for increasing customizable user interface and a vivid experience attracting users who are Tech-savvy and pleasure seekers.

Android

Android was launched as a technology back in 2007 when the iPhone was made available to consumer usage. Since then Android has soared and scaled heights.

Android Lollipop adds various new features to app widgets, responsiveness, user interface and experience but still stands a spot behind iOS when it comes to smooth interface. Android offers a free SDK with a lot of cute tools for developers to play magic.

Perhaps Android is a step behind (a very minuscule step) behind iOS in terms of UI and UX but upon grasping the dominance of Android, every business would want an Android app as its first choice. Major handset brands like LG, Samsung, One+ etc are using Android Technology and with a lion’s share of the market for mobile app development, an Android app comes with no questions asked.

Windows Phone

Relatively new to a market, that was already dominated by Android and iOS. Perhaps one of the most wondrous thing about a Windows device is Microsoft’s integration to all its products. Windows ‘Tiles’ is quite a beaut feature and has become a part of a wonderful user experience in some of Windows’ best apps.

The technology claims to have all the features that Android, iOS but enough being said, the proof lies in the pudding.

Implementation proves to be a continuous burden to developers. A small community doesn’t really help in instilling confidence in developers or businessmen to go for windows app development.

Windows phone app is mainly for people who are not that tech oriented or if your business is heavily relied on Office 365 and Microsoft products. Windows phone app development is majorly a strategy to grab a dominance in the 5% share of the smartphone market acquired by Windows.

Cross Mobile App Development

Cross platform mobile app development is a rarity but an option nonetheless. Here are some reasons why someone would opt for a cross platform app

# App is already existing on other platform or to test the waters on mobile platform
# Availability on all platforms since day one
# Cost of development is quite less on cross platform, a cheaper way into the mobile world
# A good way to enjoy the best of all worlds while utilizing the benefits of web enabled components

Ionic: Developed on HTML5 and best friends with AngularJS, it allows rapid prototyping and building of hybrid mobile apps. Compared with the rest, Ionic provides the best design. If you are really tied to AngularJS and want a complete experience on all platforms, then Ionic is the way to go.

Sencha: Sencha is based on HTML5, has a structured code and allows Phonegap integration. Sencha provides a rich set of API integration and documentation. It has wonderful styling, theming, graphing and grid layout.

Xamarin: The top stack for mobile app development using C#. Xamarin holds a myriad of tools to
unleash the power of C# on mobile apps. The Xamarin community is very active and provides stupendous support, you can leverage Visual Studio, C# Libraries etc. All in all a prodigious platform for .Net developers.

Honorable Mentions: Cordova, Phonegap, Appcelerator

There is no right door here, every door will lead to a world of unending possibilities. Be it Android or Sencha, every option here will grant access to a panorama of human digital behaviour readily being monitored on your app, every single second of every single day.

I hope you enjoyed the blog. There are various more technologies that the Daffodil team and I will be writing on. Stay up to date with them by subscribing to this blog. Cheers.