If you take a second to look up from your phone during the day, I’m sure you’ll notice that everyone else has their eyes glued to a mobile device as well. Mobile applications, something that none of us is a stranger to, have become a part of the bedrock of how the world at large gets things done. Everyone today, regardless of their age, spends a lot of their leisure time on screens, so it’s no surprise that their development of them has become increasingly democratized, too. To get it out there, as Wikipedia says, A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on desktop computers, and web applications which run in mobile web browsers rather than directly on the mobile device.
Mobile is a growing industry that attracts businesses from every marketplace. No wonder mobile app revenues have reached almost US$420.70bn as of 2022. The exploding popularity of smartphones and tablets has made mobile application development an increasingly popular trend among business owners, as well as the general population all over the world.
In simple language, today, there is an app for anything and everything. You name it, the app store has it. Figuratively, there is nothing one cannot do, while sitting in a place with the use of mobile applications.
Broadly, mobile apps can be categorised into 3 types:
Native Mobile Apps:
Native mobile apps are designed to be native to one platform, whether it’s ios app development, Android App Development, or Windows Phone. The native platform can be advantageous because it tends to optimise and customise the user experience. Native mobile apps have a great level of specificity are they are specially designed for a particular platform.
Hybrid Mobile Apps:
A hybrid app is essentially a web app, but it’s given a lightweight native app “container” that allows it to leverage certain native platform features and device hardware (e.g. a device’s camera, calendar, push notifications and so on) that a web application cannot access. Though hybrid apps are not as fast or reliable as native apps, they have a greater capacity for streamlining the development process.
Web Apps:
Responsive websites switch to a different design when they are accessed from a mobile device. Adaptive web applications, on the other hand, scale to fit the different screen sizes of mobile devices. Web apps are built using the most popular programming languages, but they can’t use hardware on mobile devices or be sold in any app store.
For instance, iOS application development is the process of making mobile applications for Apple hardware, including the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The software is written by iOS app developers in the Swift programming language or Objective-C and then deployed to the App Store for users to download. Developing iPhone apps is in itself a greater advantage.
With these, mobile applications have conquered all the major market niches, making human life easier and convenient wherever possible. From Social Media Apps to Productivity Mobile Apps, they have coded it all. Digital transformation is sculpting the future of every business that’s operating both, online and offline, and missing out could spell a downfall for a developing business. The most popular apps have leveraged technology to the best of their abilities and have become successful around the world. Building a feature-rich application with the help of a skilled team of developers and designers can take your business to new heights.
