The mobile application revolution is here. Apple’s app store reached 25 billion downloads this year and offers more than 700,000 apps. In addition, there are more than 600,000 apps available on the android store. Organisations are realising huge potential by utilising apps to entice customers, create market awareness, provide information, remain relevant, be competitive, increase efficiencies, and enhance productivity. With the popularity and promise of mobile applications, organisations who fail to have a defined mobile strategy will not realise the competitive edge that come with the mobile application revolution.
A key part of an organisations mobile strategy is consideration for how mobile and web applications can be built and delivered. The three most popular approaches are:
1. Native App
- A native application is specifically developed for a particular device and mobile operating system (eg, the app is solely developed for either android, apple, blackberry, or windows devices/systems). Native apps provide the best user experience, performance, and access to device functions (eg camera, contacts, etc)
2. Mobile Web
- Mobile web apps can run in most browsers on most devices. For example, a web app for an iphone would run in Safari. A web app for a windows mobile phone would run in Internet Explorer. The disadvantage is that they are limited by the capabilities of the browsers they run in, so are currently unable to access all the features and functions on the local device (eg camera, geolocation, etc). The app itself isn’t actually downloaded onto the device, so there is no software or app to install. Mobile web apps have inferior performance compared to native apps.
3. Hybrid
- Hybrid apps provide the best of both worlds. Like mobile web apps, hybrid apps can run in most browsers on most devices on the single code base, and gives access to all of the device features.
|
Native |
Mobile Web |
Hybrid |
|
| App performance |
Excellent |
Good |
Very Good |
| Development speed |
Difficult |
Fast |
Moderate |
| Can run on multiple devices / platforms |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
| Device access (camera, gyroscope, accelerometer, etc) |
Full access |
Partial Access |
Full Access |
| Offline access |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Reuse source code for other applications |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
| Allows for “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
| Advantages | Great performance.
Rich user interface Can use all device features |
App runs on any device
Fast development Simple maintenance No need to install new software Updates appear automatically All users on same version |
App runs on any device
Fast development Can use all device features All users on same version |
| Disadvantages | One app developed per platform/device
Users must manually download & install app updates Users may ignore updates, resulting in different app versions |
Has limited device access
Slower performance |
Very good performance, but not as good as Native |
The most appropriate mobile development approach for an organisation depends on the requirements and intended use of the app. As discussed in an earlier blog, research firm Gartner developed a concept called “the rule of three”, where they encourage companies to consider the mobile platform (web/hybrid) approach to mobility when they need their mobile solutions to:
– Support three or more mobile business applications
– Support three or more mobile operating systems
– Integrate with at least three back-end data sources
So the choice of app development strategy you make depends on what you wish to do with the app, your organisations long term vision, the underlying business and functional requirements and intended use of the app.
Ben Ward 