Cross-platform app development makes sense in 2021. As a growing organization, you want your application to be present on both iOS and Android. Why so? Android has around 72.84% of the mobile market share, while iOS holds 26.34% of the share in May 2021. Now, why would companies want to miss on such a big audience?
It is expected that the mobile market will reach $935 billion by 2023. To capitalize on such a huge market, it is important to target a diverse set of audiences.
Enterprise mobile applications are growing exponentially. Remote work and virtual infrastructure-driven culture are generating the need for mobile apps focused on enterprise operations.
Source: Net Solutions
But creating dynamic and engaging applications requires highly capable tools. Mobile applications need to be performance-oriented and user-friendly. Which tools can help to achieve that?
This article will focus on the top 7 tools that developers use around the world for building cross-platform mobile applications. The rankings are based on the developers survey 2021 by Statista. We will highlight the features of each framework and what makes it a good choice for cross-platform mobile app development.
Top 7 cross-platform Enterprise Mobile Development Tools
Cross-platform apps save a lot of time. Most of all – they are a commercially sensible option for enterprise apps. Instead of developing separate apps for both platforms, companies can get a single, native-like application for both iOS and Android.
There are multiple tools for developing cross-platform applications. But enterprises often get confused as to which one they should start with? Here’s a list of 7 cross-platform mobile app development tools for building enterprise mobile apps: –
Source: Statista
- React NativeThe most talked-about cross-platform mobile app framework in 2020 was React Native, with a 42% market share. The open-source mobile development framework combines React, the JavaScript library, for building interactive apps.
React Native provides a native-like look and feel to the applications. The app interacts seamlessly with the native components and offers an engaging user experience.
The JavaScript code consists of a single code for developing components of both Android and iOS. The shared codebase requires only minor tweaks to match the experience of the respective platforms.
However, the framework is dependent on third-party elements, which can weaken the security of the application.
- FlutterFlutter is the emerging leader in 2021 in the cross-platform mobile application industry with a 42% market share. In 2020, the framework was behind React Native with a 39% share.
The tool is a software development kit (SDK) that enables developers to write a single codebase for building cross-platform apps. The framework works majorly on the Dart programming language, which is easy to understand by JavaScript developers.
Source: ExistekMajor giants like Google, Alibaba, etc., use Flutter for their mobile applications. Flutter supports a lot of widgets that enable app enhancements with ease. There’s a widget for scrolling, navigation, fonts, icons, etc.
- Cordova
The cross-platform tool had 18% of the market share in 2020, according to Statista. Cordova uses HTML5 and CSS3. Since it is easy to use, developers admire the framework’s capability to build cross-platform apps.
Cordona provides a WebView of the UI, which smoothens the code execution on each platform. The web pages stay the same, but only the native containers change. It has a lot of built-in plugins. There are pre-defined templates and development tools.
Cordova apps are simple to update as they bypass the version. Native apps need to be released with every version update, taking longer to provide the update application.
- IonicSimilar to Cordova, Ionic also had an 18% market share in 2020 and a 16% share in 2021. But what differentiates it from other frameworks is the pace at which developers can build mobile applications.
Ionic works smoothly with other client-side frameworks like Angular, Vue, and React. It has UI components that are similar to React Native. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are the primary technologies used to write the code in Ionic.
It helps in building a design-centric UI, which allows developers to add components with ease. Enterprise apps are highly compatible with the framework because the framework depends on the SaaS UI structure.
- XamarinOften termed as one of the leading cross-platform frameworks for mobile app development, Xamarin boasted of 14% market share in 2020. It is based on C# and .NET. Developers who work with Object-Oriented programming admire the framework because it simplifies designing the UI.
If you need a platform-specific interface, then Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS are the perfect tools. The tool helps to render dynamic data in real-time. Similar to other cross-platform tools for mobile development, Xamarin uses a single codebase for both platforms.
Source: Microsoft DocsThe framework also offers functionality testing and quality monitoring. It has an Android emulator that allows developers to test the application in an Android-like environment before the release.
- UnityWith an 11% market share, Unity is sixth in line. It has a powerful cross-platform mobile app framework for building dynamic apps with heavy graphic requirements. Unity is perfect for building enterprise apps that require simulators to provide training.
Unity helps to gamify the mobile experience for enterprises. The tool can help to build apps for 17 different platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and many more. The framework also offers to track user analytics for various functions.
Unity3D also assists developers with GameObject creation and destruction. The framework has a great community that provides complete technical support on different issues and errors.
- NativeScriptThe framework uses Angular, TypeScript, or JavaScript for building native-like apps for both iOS and Android. It enables the developers to use native APIs using JavaScript. It smoothens the process of building interactive and seamless applications.
NativeScript helps to use any JavaScript library that doesn’t depend upon the Internet. There’s complete access to the development libraries, along with native APIs. With cross-platform declarative UI support, you can build the UI once and implement it everywhere.
The framework provides support for Angular.js 2 and TypeScript. Developers can easily build feature-rich applications using NativeScript. They can also use reuse packages from NPM, Cocoapods, and even Cradle.
Conclusion
Cross-platform mobile app development is becoming a priority for companies going through digitization. It is important to reach the audiences on both the platforms.
Enterprise applications require functioning on both iOS and Android. They are complex apps with rich databases and powerful functions that must be accessible on different platforms.
The 7 platforms described above have an advantage over all the others since they are preferred by developers all over the world.
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