Advantages of Cross-Platform Development: What You Need to Know

Over half of the world's online traffic is generated by mobile devices (over 58% as of July 2024), while the remaining half is spent browsing computers and tablets. These figures underline that online applications should aim for a multi-platform launch.

Users, customers, and staff demand the convenience of using applications in various ways. They want the freedom to access an application anytime—while commuting, walking, or in the garden—but they also want to enjoy a superior widescreen experience when sitting at their computers.

What are Cross-Platform Applications?

Cross-platform development involves developing an application that can be distributed on multiple platforms, such as mobile devices, tablets, or computers.

Several software development libraries, such as React Native and Flutter, make this possible. These platforms allow you to code once and deploy to any platform. By maintaining only one codebase, development teams reduce their build time.

Traditionally, app development was done on a bespoke basis for each platform. This meant that to release an iOS app, the app code had to be written in the native iOS language.

This is how native apps are built today, and there are reasons to continue building apps this way, but in terms of speed and value for money, this method falls short of cross-platform development.

Why are Cross-Platform Apps Essential?

When launching an app, it’s critical to first focus on captivating and growing an audience of early adopters. This will help you quickly learn about their needs and desires, giving your app development process clear goals to meet your audience’s demands.

To do this, it is essential to quickly launch, test, and adapt new application features and confidently discard those that do not work. The most flexible and economically viable method to do this is undoubtedly cross-platform development and launch.

Reducing development costs, both upfront and during the support and enhancement phases, allows you to quickly and cost-effectively deliver what your audience wants. Ultimately, your product will evolve faster and offer more value to your users, leading you to outperform the competition, grow your audience, and increase profits.

Top 5 Cross-Platform Development Tools

Cross-platform development also allows the creation of a single code that can be adapted to different operating systems and devices. This can reduce development time and costs and enable software to be released on multiple platforms simultaneously.

Generally, tools and frameworks that generate code compatible with different platforms are used to achieve cross-platform development. Some examples of tools and frameworks for cross-platform development are Xamarin, React Native, Flutter, Apache Cordova, and PhoneGap.

Here is a list of the top 5 cross-platform development tools, based on their popularity and effectiveness:

1. Xamarin

It is a cross-platform development tool for creating native mobile applications in C#. It allows developers to share the same code across multiple platforms, such as iOS, Android, and Windows, reducing development time and costs.

2. React Native

It is a cross-platform mobile app development framework. It uses JavaScript and React to create native mobile apps for iOS and Android. It is trendy due to its ease of use, flexibility, and performance.

3. Flutter

Flutter is a cross-platform software development kit for creating mobile applications for iOS and Android. It uses the Dart programming language and offers many tools for creating fast and attractive user interfaces.

4. Apache Cordova

It is a cross-platform software development tool to create hybrid mobile applications for iOS, Android, and Windows platforms. It uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to develop mobile applications in an embedded web browser.

5. PhoneGap

This cross-platform development tool is used to create hybrid mobile apps for iOS, Android, and other mobile operating systems. It uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to develop mobile apps that run in an embedded web browser.

Each offers different features and benefits, so it's essential to evaluate them carefully before selecting the one that best suits your needs and projects.

In short, cross-platform development allows us to launch software on different devices and operating systems more easily and quickly. Now that you know what cross-platform development is and its main tools take the next step in your project. 

Do you have an app development project or need more information? Contact us, and we will be happy to assist you.