In recent years, the mobile application sector has grown remarkably. It has multifold in just a few years and so does the demand for these apps. In fact, since the Smartphone advent, mobile apps have instantly taken over every aspect of our lives such as entertainment, communication, shopping, transport, eLearning, and others.
From a business perspective, mobile app development has become a necessity in order to keep up with the needs of consumers. The field of mobile application development is broad and involves a lot of technologies for different platforms.
This is exactly what we will be exploring in this post! We will talk about different mobile app platforms and what technologies are commonly used to develop mobile apps for these platforms.
But before we dig deeper into the mobile app development technologies, let us have a brief discussion about the importance of mobile apps in today’s fast-paced business world.
Do you know that mobile apps are now being used more than traditional websites?
There is a common misconception that, in comparison to websites, mobile apps are less preferred. But in the present time, people spend around 87% of their time using different mobile apps. This is exactly what has made mobile app development a must thing for businesses all around the globe.
The best part about mobile app development is that it can be developed on different platforms. But developing an app is not just enough. It is also important to ensure a good app design as there are multiple programming languages and operating systems per platform.
The development of mobile apps on different platforms is crucial in gaining access to the wider potential audience while maximizing your business’ earning potential. A well-designed and user-friendly app are highly significant in establishing your brand identity. That is why there are more than 5 million mobile apps available to download. Not to mention, on average, almost 4375 mobile apps get released on just Google Play Store, daily, while around 1082 apps release on Apple App Store regularly. Just in the year 2017, the estimated number of mobile app downloads reached up to 269 billion! This makes around 33 apps for every person on our planet Earth.
Any business that aims to sell, assist and offer service or provide information ensures that its apps are easily accessible to the customers. While it is important to brainstorm how your mobile app will actually function and which resources will be needed, first you must ascertain which technology is likely to serve your business needs at best. As stated earlier, there are plenty of mobile app technologies that are being used widely for a cross-platform or specific platform app development.
Following are the most common and widely-used programming languages for mobile app development.
- C++
- Swift
- Java
- HTML5
- PHP
- BuildFire.js
- Python
- C#
- Objective-C
- JavaScript
- SQL
- Perl
- Rust
- Ruby
All of these are the most commonly used programming languages to develop mobile applications. They are popular programming languages that help you develop dynamic apps that run on multiple platforms.
When you work with the professionals of mobile app development, they assist you in choosing the right programming language, keeping the goal and idea of your mobile app in mind. Remember the choice of the programming language will help in clear communication with your target audience. Thus, you must take the help of professionals so that you can design the most effective and competitive mobile app for your business.
However, what makes a programming language the right choice depends on various factors. There are multiple elements of a programming language that are considered for developing different types of mobile apps. Some of the features of a programming language that makes it the best choice include:
- The simplicity and efficiency of the programming language
- The responsiveness and speed of the software along with portability
- Easy maintenance and coding
- Flexibility to be incorporated with any mobile platform like Android, iOS, Windows, VR, Web, Wearable etc.
- Full support with APIs
- Object-oriented and procedural language
- A language that contains powerful IDEs that makes coding easy and error-free
- Compatibility with servers
In addition to these programming languages, there are also a host of tools available, as the advanced mobile app technologies, which help developers to further refine your mobile app to meet your business goals. When these technological tools work with programming languages, it helps to build a mobile app from the ground up while providing multi-platform capabilities to approach a larger audience.
For your better understanding, let’s have a brief look at the most commonly used tools which enhances the performance of the programming language.
PhoneGap - This is an Adobe tool that is available for several platforms like Windows, Android, and iOS. This tool is best to incorporate when you want to design an application for different mobile platforms.
Appcelerator - This great platform enables the development of the native app for tablets, mobiles, and desktop by using PHP, HTML, and JavaScript. So if your business wants to develop a more hardware-based app then this great development technology is the best choice to go for.
RhoMobile - It is a powerful and effective open-source framework, which is based on Ruby. This tool helps developers to develop different apps. It allows the development of native apps both easily and instantly and for all platforms. So if you want to develop a highly functional and powerful app for all the major smartphones, RhoMobile is the tool to go for.
WidgetPad - This platform provides a collaborative approach that using web technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript. The tool offers a multitude of great options right from versioning to source code editing and distribution. One more advantage of incorporating this tool for your business mobile app is that your developer can use this to build apps for iOS, Android, and web.
MoSync - This is another great software development kit that is a multi-platform tool and based on web programming. It provides support for Eclipse-based IDE for C++/C programming and also features support for some other programming languages like PHP, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby.
A Few Technological Aspects to Consider
When a business is in the initial development phase, businesses and app developers work collaboratively to define the structure, design, features, architectures, and functions of the to-be-developed mobile app. This involves the selection of the most flexible yet suitable technologies, frameworks, platforms, and tools for the development of the application.
But the question is: why do businesses need to get involved in the development phase of their mobile application?
Ideally, the selection of the right technological stack is the job of your mobile app development company. But as an investor, you must participate and get involved in each phase of the development. This also includes participation in the selection process of the most suitable tech stack for the development of the mobile application.
Any business that manages to develop a highly functional and effective mobile application, by going down this path, receive the following business advantages – sooner or later.
- An effective mobile application makes your business visible to your potential customer and at all times.
- A functional mobile app works as a direct marketing channel for your business.
- With the great idea of developing a business app for your business, you can provide excellent value to your employees as well as customers
- A well-developed mobile application is equivalent to building brand recognition. It greatly contributes to improving your brand awareness
- Regardless of the services or products offered by your business, a good mobile application improves customer engagement and opens new ways to know more about their preferences.
Your business mobile application can help you stand out from the competition. This is an excellent opportunity to take a big leap ahead of competitors. Get involved in the mobile application process, choose the right tech stack with your developer and define the goal of your app development so that you could be the first one to offer this huge brand exposure to your customers.
When you collaboratively work with your development team it helps in refining your mobile app development lifecycle to create a highly efficient and faster application for your business.
Selecting the Best Mobile App Development Technologies
All of these mobile app development technologies are great platforms to start with your business's mobile app development. When it comes to app technologies, you will get multitudes of options to select from.
The best way to select the best mobile app development technology is to keep a ground plan and take the help of a reputed and experienced mobile app development service that would offer a complete mobile app development as per your business preferences.
The app development industry has multiplied by leaps and bounds in the last five years. It has significantly changed the way today’s businesses function globally. With organizations aligning mobile apps with their business productivity in present times and considering the instant innovation in mobile devices on different platforms, it requires app developers to build several versions of a mobile application to perform on different platforms by using just one language and various pieces of reusable code.
A mobile app can help your business in reaching a huge number of potential customers instantly and to make them buy your offered products or services. This is exactly why every organization and business is now focusing on supporting their business operation by developing an app. For this developers use different tools and come up with new ideas every day.
The mob app development industry is establishing every passing day. Businesses are embracing the newest mobile technology and purposefully investing in different mobile apps to enhance their brand awareness strategies and to increase their clientele as well as business profit.
In the nutshell
So once you have realized your idea of the mobile app, it’s time to simply validate it, know your target market and audience and then narrow down the mobile platform on which you would ideally like to create your mobile application.
Once you have planned the way forward, next is to select the most reputed app development company that will select the right programming language, taking account of your business preferences and strategies to develop either hybrid, native, or cross-platform apps.
Further Reading:
Native vs Hybrid app development
Latest Mobile App Development Trends
