Mobile applications for business are essential due to several reasons including the presence of a huge audience on mobile and increasing tendencies towards mobility. Unlike web development, mobile operating systems are many, and each platform has a unique place in the market.
Likely, each platform thrives on a different technology from each other.
These all make the job of mobile app developers daunting especially when a new technology enters or existing gets an update or becomes obsolete. Constant learning of programming languages, adopting tools, and applying techniques pose challenges for mobile developers who are scrappy to deliver quality results with speed and excellence for each mobile platform.
Mobile app development on native platforms requires native SDK to give complete access to APIs for hardware and OS features, as well as emulators like tools. Each platform has specific IDE along with development languages and third party supports.
For instance, iOS development needs fluency on Objective-C and now, on Swift with Xcode IDE and toolsets. The android environment is sustaining in Android Studio with the help of Java and other scripts. Similarly, you can convert your WordPress website into an iOS or Android app using platforms like Appmaker WP, AppPresser and Mobiloud. Whereas, Windows Mobile uses XNA tools along with Silverlight and requires Microsoft languages including V, C#, XAML, JavaScript, etc.
Table of contents:
Clients’ Expectations Roadblocks Solution Options Technologies for Cross-platform Mobile App Development C# Ideal Language for Cross-platform App Development ConclusionClients’ Expectations
Do you know clients are aware of all these technical complexities involved in mobile app development?
Hardly a few, only those are tech-savvy. The majority of businesses or professionals who want to dive in-app ecosystem or leverage it in their favors, don’t know anything at all.
Clients want native user experiences at first glance because it is a key to winning the app users hence, competition in the market. The second aim of clients is covering the maximum target audience through presence on different mobile platforms.
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Roadblocks
Apparently, mobile app developers should think of native apps on each major mobile OS platform to meet such needs. Unfortunately, native app development is time, resources, and developer-hungry process with significant investment requirements.
Therefore, it is feasible in certain circumstances and for particular businesses/industries. Rests have to search some other viable options to make it cheaper, rapid, and possible with a sizable team of programmers and designers.
Solution Options
The Web App Development
The market has some alternatives such as HTML-based Web App development using pure web development technologies and with the help of mobile browser capabilities to access hardware and OS features of the client devices.
Unfortunately, it falls short in performance and delivering native-like user experiences. Therefore, the market has placed another option in the form of a hybrid mobile app, which falls in between native and Web App.
Hybrid App Development
Like Web App, it is browser-based still capable of accessing native APIs and have tools akin to native SDKs. It may or may not need basic browser technologies for development and access native APIs with the help of wrappers like Cordova.
Hybrid apps require only one-time coding and can deploy on most of the mobile OS platforms. Apparently, it fulfills our two essential needs: native-like user experiences and a single code base with fast turnarounds.
Thus, cross-platform (Hybrid) mobile app development has gotten traction in a short while. A number of technologies to develop and frameworks to assist the developers had escalated with the pace of time and continue today.
Technologies for Cross-platform Mobile App Development
Hybrid app development technologies have evolved over time. In the beginning, it was Titanium then PhoneGap, and now Ionic platforms are using basic web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Cordova code wrappers have made it possible for these browser-based technologies to access native mobile features like touch gestures, accelerometer, camera, etc.
Today market has React Native and NativeScript like cross-platform app development frameworks, which mainly rely on JavaScript.
Apart from the core web technologies, other web development language based frameworks are Kivy using Python while RhoMobile uses Ruby. However, these technologies have a limited size of communities of developers, so their spread is also limited.
It is Xamarin, which is C# based cross-platform acquired by Microsoft and uses Microsoft technologies and tools. We know that Microsoft has nurtured a big ecosystem and several developer communities.
Therefore, Microsoft technologies are general qualifications of programmers across the world and the leading technical universities have included it in their syllables.
Enterprise software development is a predominant area of Microsoft developers, right from desktop to mobile applications. Unfortunately, the Windows Phone platform had not gained enough tractions in the market and is running with little share.
His enormous developer community is looking for mobile opportunities and less inclined to learn iOS and Android app development technologies and tools from scratch after spending a significant amount of time and resources on Microsoft technologies.
Luckily, Xamarin has offered them lucrative opportunities to become mobile app developers without leaving Microsoft technology platform. It is C #, other -.NET framework based technologies and tools, which have enabled them to excel in app development with native-like user experiences.
C# Ideal Language for Cross-platform App Development
Technically, C# allows you to do anything that you can do with Objective-C, Swift, and Java. The helpful and distinguishing features are:
Type Interface
C# uses type interface to offer typing safety for the developers so they can do many things with fewer keystrokes and without boilerplate or verbose type annotations like daunting tasks.
Richer Types
With C#, you can use collections and other compound types safely, no needs to make casts or comments, because Xamarin tools automatically understand the intent behind the code.
Responsive Async
At the language level, Swift, Objective-C, and Java asynchronous programming need callbacks, and manual bookkeeping while in the case of C#, it makes async a breeze and keeps apps responsive.
A Grade Functions
In Java, lambdas are absent while in objective-C, they are a bit cumbersome, and in C#, developers feel right at home with first-class functions.
The good news is that Xamarin is now a part of Microsoft, as Microsoft has acquired it. Moreover, Xamarin has integrated with Visual Studio and MSDN. Thus, any Microsoft technology developer can easily develop mobile apps using Xamarin capabilities. Therefore, instead of Xamarin Studio as a single development IDE, programmers can make rapid iPhone or Android Apps in Visual Studio too.
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Conclusion
After an introduction with out-of-box capabilities of C#, we can say that C# and -.NET runtime variants make Xamarin an established, polished, and speedy platform to access full native features and functionality with better performance across the platforms.
However, you need to have fluent .net developers with flairs in C# and other -.NET technologies to do superb coding. Besides these, good experiences in Xamarin and other mobile app development platforms, chiefly iOS, Android, and Windows Phone are a requirement. So your team of developers can judge big scale and intricate projects of Cross-Platform Mobile App Development in cost-efficient ways.
Fortunately, you need not go anywhere else because Perception System has everything need to make your Xamarin adventure a definite success.
