Due to the exploding popularity of smartphones and tablets, mobile application development is an increasingly popular medium of software creation. In fact, mobile apps have become an essential element of most businesses, and revenues are projected to hit nearly $600 billion in 2020. This prolific and growing industry has attracted businesses from every corner of the marketplace as consumers detach themselves from desktop computing and turn to their mobile devices.
The creation of mobile applications has much of its roots in traditional software development. The end result, however, is software intended to utilize the unique features and hardware of mobile devices
What is mobile app development, how does it work, and why is it important to your business?
Types of mobile apps and programming languages
While the most popular operating systems, iOS and Android, have done an excellent job of standardizing the types of mobile app development available to programmers, apps can still vary.
Native apps
These are apps created for a specific platform (iOS or Android) using the software development tools and languages supported by those operating systems.
HTML5 apps
Based on the near-universal standards of web technologies – HTML5, JavaScript and CSS – this type of mobile app takes a write-once-run-anywhere approach to mobile development.
Hybrid apps
These apps entail the creation of a container developed in the native system that makes it possible to embed an HTML5 app within it.
Best platforms for building a mobile app
Best platforms for building a mobile appJust a few short years ago, if you wanted to develop an app, you had to either know how to code or pay someone to develop the app for you. Fortunately, low-code and no-code apps and services have appeared over the past several years to help you bring your vision to fruition.
As a cloud-based DIY app builder, Appy Pie allows you to create and publish an app for any platform without any programming skills. Since the platform is based in the cloud, you can drag and drop all the elements online. Once your HTML5 app is complete, you can send it to be used on iOS, Android, Windows and even Progressive platforms.
For brands looking to build a very visual app, Mobile Roadie is a platform that works with various media, including RSS feeds, Twitter and Google News. The builder allows you to send out push notifications and pulls data from a variety of sources, such as XML, JSON, PHP, CSV and HTML.