Top 6 Cross Platform Mobile Development Tools to Use in 2017 and 2018

With the advancement in technology and increasing smartphone usage, apps have become an integral part in the modern business world. Various enterprises, including, small sized and mid-sized have started realizing the need of apps for their enterprise. Since different platforms are available and due to ample demand for apps, cross platform development tools would be trending in the coming years as per the marketing research.

As per a survey by International Data Corporation, the market for cross-platform development tools will reach $4.8 billion by 2018, having an annual growth rate of more than 40%. Also, Gartner, an American leading research and advisory firm, is expecting more than 20 million enterprise apps to be developed by 2018.

The demand for mobile apps development (android and iPhone) for enterprises is rapidly increasing. So, it is necessary for organizations to develop applications that increase their sales and enhance customer experience. Thus, it has become need of the time to have apps that are capable to work on different platforms.

Before knowing top cross platform tools, you must be aware of advantages of using these tools:

1. If application is available on more platforms, certainly more people will be able to reach your business. Android and iPhone cover a majority of the world mobile market. So, developing an application that runs on both gives you the added advantage of tapping into greater market potential.
2. Marketing would be easy since you have a larger fan base available on various platforms.
3. Deploying changes is easier when you have application that runs across all platforms.
4. Single code needs to be written for different platforms, which utilizes the time of resources.
5. By using some tools, you can easily code in HTML5 and convert for different mobile platforms.

Now you have idea about the benefits of Cross-platform development technology. Here are some of the cross-platform tools to be used in 2017 & 2018.

1. PhoneGap: PhoneGap is a software development framework by Adobe System that is used to develop mobile applications. Adobe system later released an open source version of the software known as Apache Cordova. This software lets developers develop apps using standard web APIs for all major mobile operating systems. To develop apps using PhoneGap, one needs to know web-development languages like HTML, CSS, and JScript. The rest of the work, such as look and feel of the app and portability among various mobile operating systems is taken care by the framework itself. Developers can work with device hardware features like camera, accelerometer, sound, GPS and much more with the help of PhoneGap.

One of the most important benefits of using PhoneGap is that it maintains software development kits for each of the platform created by app developers. PhoneGap also allows variety of plugins to be used.

2. Xamrain: Xamarin is one of the best Cross-platform development tools. It is built on .NET Framework. Using a single shared C# codebase, developers can build native iOS, Android, and Windows apps. Xamrain lets you use the same IDE, language, and APIs everywhere. The apps developed using this tool can be tested on any number of devices through the company’s cloud service. One of the major benefits of Xamrain is Rapid Mobile App Development. It has libraries for UI development that eventually makes the development process faster and easier.

3. Appcelerator: Appcelerator Titanium is an open source software development kit for cross platform mobile app development. It allows to create native mobile apps on various platforms including iOS, Android and Windows from JavaScript codebase. It also offers value add-ons like mobile backend as a service, crash detection, mobile test automation, mobile analytics and performance management. Its SDK reuses 60% to 90% of the same code for all the apps you make, which helps in saving an ample amount of time.

4. Sencha Touch: Sencha Touch is a mobile application framework specifically built for the mobile web and allows to develop user interface for mobile apps using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. It is based on MVC structure. The primary goal of Sencha Touch is to clear the way for quick and easy development of HTML5 based mobile apps. This in turn gives a native look and feel to the apps. It saves the development time of the coders by offering speedy delivery with the help of pre-built components.

5. Appmobi: Appmobi is a hybrid platform that can be used to develop apps for both mobile and web.

6. Rhomobile: Rhomobile is an open source Ruby based mobile development platform for the development of mobile apps. It uses HTML for developing native apps for Android, iPhone, Windows as well as Blackberry. Rhomobile allows to develop apps more quickly compared to any other platform. Applications developed using this Framework can work offline as well.

So, by now, you must be clear with common tools and trends to be used for developing Cross Platform applications. Also, by using cross platform tools, you can save time and cost on developing apps on various platforms.

Planning to develop a Cross-platform app for your Enterprise?

If you are planning to develop cross platform apps for your organisation, Smacware will help you. which is one of the best android application development company and also best corporate video production company in Bangalore, which has helped many global companies to increase their business revenue.