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Pros & Cons of Mobile Cross-Platform Application Design

Stepping back just a few years, it was deemed convenient to have a mobile app version of a website. Today, it is nothing less than imperative . With the unprecedented surge in mobile internet usage, mobile apps have emerged as a sure shot tool to make your presence felt.

Once you decide to develop a mobile app, there are a few things to be considered.

With several Smartphone users using a plethora of mobile platforms, it's become necessary to target most, if not every device out there. Now, it's not sufficient to have just an iPhone app. You need to build apps that support android, iPad, windows phone and also Blackberry.

Depending on the resources available, small or medium scale businesses can target some or all of these platforms. However, due to budget constraints, building apps for all platforms may not be feasible. In such a case, it makes sense to isolate platforms which have a large user base and a greater chance of adoption. Android and iOS have become magnets for app developers, with windows mobile and Blackberry catching up.

That being said, there are obvious advantages to designing for multiple platforms. Cross-platform frameworks — which include Appcelerator's Titanium, Rhodes and PhoneGap — are designed to limit the work that a developer or development team has to put into creating apps for several platforms.

Pros

1) A developer can just write the code once and then reuse those bits in later projects or on other platforms, with slight modifications

2)More frameworks are very easy and convenient for developers to use, and they also support HTML5 and CSS3alongside the calls to more native functions.

3)The most striking advantage, however, has to be reduced development costs, as it allows companies to get an app on multiple platforms without hiring a team of developers for each specific ecosystem.

4) Appcelerator and PhoneGap and other major frameworks offer easy access to plug ins or modules, that can easily plug into other services and tools.

In spite of the several benefits of Cross-Platform Application Design, one also needs to consider the flip side of the situation. Businesses will have to weigh in the pros with the following cons.

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Cons

1)The Framework you are using may not support every feature of every operating system. If iOS, Android or Windows phone get a new feature, you will have to update the framework to support the changes.

2) The cross-compilation process can result in the code not running fast, and may be slower than using native tools and calls for an app.

3) High-resolution games would be mostly non-compatible and 3D Support is often limited. If you are a game developer, you may want to give this process a miss

4) Designing an app for iOS is very different from designing an app for Android. The UI and UX conventions are different, and touch points and menus work in different ways. This makes the cross compilation process more difficult.

Even with the cons, designing for multiple platforms simultaneously is a very lucrative option. If you have a small or medium sized business concern and are looking out to reach the maximum number of users with optimum cost, cross-platform designing is your one stop solution for success. So don't think twice about investing in iPhone application development , iPad application development , and even Android application development, It is an investment that is sure pay dividends in the long run.

For More Info

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