Mobile phones have become one of the basic needs in today’s life. The reason that makes them an essential component in our lives is the mobile apps installed in them. These mobile apps make the lives of users easy by assisting them in their day-to-day tasks. That’s why a significant portion of the business sector is relying on developing mobile apps, especially cross-platform ones, on engaging their target audience and spreading brand awareness.
However, to design a robust and high-performing application, you need to know about the best tools and platforms. To figure out this, you can consult app development experts or hire a mobile app development agency. However, this article will also suggest some of the top-class tools you can consider for cross-platform mobile app development in 2021.
What is Cross-Platform App Development?
Traditionally, companies develop separate apps using tools and languages specific to a particular operating system. These are native apps, and they are specifically designed to run on specific platforms. Although the performance of these apps is relatively good, they have certain drawbacks, like the development cost is high, increased development time, and requirement of high-skilled developers.
To cope with these problems, cross-platform app development comes into the picture. A cross-platform application is a single app that works on different mobile platforms. It involves technologies that overcome the disadvantages of native apps. Although their performance is not as excellent as the native ones, yet they are better enough to perform well and grow your business if developed skillfully.
Why Is Cross-Platform App Development Popular?
Today, mobile phone users are significantly growing, and one of the reasons for it is the different options of mobile devices and operating systems available for the users. This brings the need for a mobile app development process to make the same application available and usable for different platforms. That’s when the developers turn to cross-platform development. It helps optimize the cost of app development and time and increase their efficiency and performance.
Five Prominent Cross-Platform app development tools to look for in 2021
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PhoneGap
Developed by the team of Apache Cordova, PhoneGap is a popular app development tool. It offers a FOSS environment that makes the cross-platform app development process pretty quick and easy. PhoneGap comprises a compiler, debugger and a couple of testing tools, and the leading web technologies include CSS3, HTML5, and JavaScript. Apart from all these, PhoneGap also consists of many highly efficient plugins, such as Image Capture, Media Recorder, Push plugin etc. These plugins help trigger some basic functionalities of smartphones like GPS, camera, accelerometer, sound, etc. For front-end application developers, it is an incredibly flexible tool.
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Appcelerator
Appcelerator is another top-class tool that offers you to design, test and deploy functionalities of a cross-platform application. It uses JavaScript for the universal code mechanism, which means using the same code for developing applications for different platforms and OS like Windows, iOS, Android, Blackberry, etc. Moreover, the tool also provides you with in-build integration with Salesforce, MongoDB, MySQL, MS Azure, Box etc. The integrated cloud service also helps distribute, pack, and examine the elements and make it a cost-effective and reliable app development tool.
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React Native
Developed by Facebook, it is an open-source, cross-platform app development tool that follows the ‘Learn once, Write everywhere’ rule. It means once coded, you can use the same code base to create applications for both Android and iOS platforms. Since it uses React and JavaScript as the primary web technology and programming language, it provides the feel of native apps, ensuring better user interaction. If you have both interest and experience in JS, React Native can do wonders for you. Its features of quick prototyping and high initial velocity makes it a must-try option for agile development. Moreover, it is a community-driven framework, thus backed with great support.
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Xamarin
With Xamarin, you can develop cross-platform applications for smartphones, tablets and desktops. It offers Android quick-start and iOS quick-start to create Native UI components. Acquired by Microsoft in February 2016, the company released the Xamarin SDKYou can also integrate enterprise features using Microsoft Visual Studio with this tool. Since it got backed by Microsoft and its high-skilled engineers, every new version brings more top-class elements for the developers to create high-quality applications.
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Ionic
Ionic is one of the famous and widely used Hybrid app development frameworks that use HTML5 to develop robust applications. These apps are better than pure native apps regarding community support, third-party access, and cost-efficiency. It is a highly preferred tool when you have limited time to market your mobile business application. You can have native UI components along with magnificent layouts to design a fantastic app. However, since it is an HTML5 framework, it requires a wrapper like PhoneGap or Cordova to work as a native app or provide native-like performance.
Wrapping Up
To create the best application for your business, you need to find the alternatives that suit best with your business requirements. You can ensure the success of your mobile application when you have a talented mobile application development company and an innovative business strategy in your mind. Therefore, analyze your requirements, prepare a concept in your mind and look for the best app development companies around you to craft a valuable application for your business.
