Creating a business mobile application is no longer a new trend, as the internet has been flooded over the past years with a plethora of applications. Speaking factually, more than 8.9 million applications already exist in the digital market; and the numbers are constantly rising every day.
While developing a mobile application, businesses have to choose from various technologies. However, the foundation of this choice lies in whether the business chooses to follow the native approach or the cross-platform one. ‘Native vs. cross-platform’ has been a matter of debate among tech experts since past many years.
Moreover, numerous businesses that have already developed mobile applications are undertaking app migration and are transforming their cross-platform apps to native ones. This is because of the increasing popularity of the native approach, which is compelling businesses to invest additional time and money.
However, what is the difference between native and cross-platform mobile apps? Let’s find the answer to this question in the next section.
Table of Contents
The Native vs. Cross-platform Verdict
Native and cross-platform are two of the development approaches that determine the end quality of the mobile application. Google’s Play Store comprises 90% of native applications and 10% of cross-platform apps. The same figure for iOS’s App Store is 76% native apps and 24% cross-platform apps.
Whether a business selects the native approach or goes cross-platform is a choice that is made on numerous factors. Primarily speaking, development cost, timeline, and business objectives form the foundation of this choice.
You must know that both of these approaches have their own technologies that are used in the app development process. For example, Android Studio and Firebase for Android and Objective-C and Swift for iOS are popular technologies for native app development. On the other hand, Flutter, React Native, and AngularJS are prominently used to develop cross-platform applications and even web apps.
Generally speaking, cross-platform mobile applications are of lower quality than their native counterparts are deliver a compromised user experience. Native apps, on the other hand, bring numerous benefits to the business and make the investment in app development a fruitful one.
In the next section, we will discuss the top benefits of the native development approach and how it is a beneficial investment for businesses.
8 Reasons Why are Businesses Going Native
Better Performance
Native mobile applications are developed with technologies that are specific to the particular operating system. To elaborate, every operating system (Android, iOS, Windows, etc.) has its own set of programming languages, frameworks, development environments, etc. Using these technologies results in a mobile app that has high-end performance.
Cross-platform mobile applications, on the other hand, work on the fundamental of ‘one code runs everywhere’ and, for this reason, lag in performance. These applications are generally slow to respond to user queries, resulting in a degraded user experience. Naturally, a business that wants to retain its customers and deliver a high-end user experience will choose native development over cross-platform one.
Enhanced UI/UX Design
Every operating system has its design guidelines. Following these guidelines guarantees the deployment of a successful and mobile-friendly application. Moreover, following these guidelines increases the chances of your app ranking higher in the app store.
By choosing native development, businesses can create different applications for different operating systems and therefore have a scope to follow the particular operating systems design guidelines. Cross-platform apps do not facilitate this need and have a common design for all the applications. As a result, the UI/UX of a native application is higher than that of a cross-platform one.
Maximum Hardware Functionality
Certain mobile app features need access to OS-level hardware in order to work. Since native development involves using the platform’s own technologies, the resulting applications already have the access to the OS-level hardware, further enhancing the user experience.
Cross-platform technologies, on the other hand, lag in this aspect; and the development process requires the use of third-party APIs to access the device’s hardware. Using these APIs further degrades the application’s performance, as extra codes need to be added during the app’s programming. Therefore, for applications that have features requiring access to the mobile device’s hardware, native development is the ideal approach.
Increased Security
Cross-platform applications are dependent on various third-party APIs and other technologies that are not standard, making them prone to numerous security holes. As a result, businesses that go for cross-platform development are prone to creating faulty applications and losing market trust.
On the other hand, mobile applications developed with the native approach are highly secure and are mostly free from data breaches. This security is highly essential in certain app categories like e-commerce, where businesses require app users to add certain sensitive information.
High Scalability
Businesses undertake app development to grow in the digital world and increase their revenue. As a result, business applications need to be highly scalable to keep up with the changing business requirements.
Native applications offer high scalability and can be easily modified to keep up with the growing business needs. To elaborate, as a business’s client base increases, the applications are expected to handle higher user traffic while offering seamless performance. Cross-platform applications lag in this area, and therefore, even though they are initially developed to cut down on project costs, they are an unsuitable option in the long term.
Seamless Upgradation
Every app requires frequent upgradation to add new features, remove obsolete ones and maintain a consistently high performance. Moreover, many times upgradation helps in eliminates bugs and optimizes the application’s performance. As a result, app upgradation is essential to sustain the business in the long run.
Upgrading a cross-platform app is a highly challenging task as the code base for these apps is complex and difficult to understand even for the developers. As a result, adding new code to introduce new features can be time-consuming. On the other hand, it is comparatively easy to upgrade a native application. Since the code base is simpler and assorted, the developers can easily add new features and enhance the app from time to time.
Offline Functionality
Having certain features offline takes user experience to the next level and increases the mobile application’s overall functionality. However, it is commonly known that since cross-platform applications do not have high-level access to the device, they are unable to store the data on the phone and facilitate offline functionality.
On the other hand, native applications offer a high-end and seamless offline functionality as all the necessary data is stored on the phone. This factor has the potential to uplift the overall user experience of your target market by using your mobile app.
Seamless Development
It should be clear by now that developing a cross-platform application is more challenging than developing a native app. Cross-platform applications have a complex code base due to the use of numerous APIs. As a result, the developers have to work more, and the app has overall high code manageability.
Native apps, on the other hand, are easier to develop. The OS platforms offer the developers various development tools like SDK, development environment, and most importantly, OS-specific programming languages. All of this contributes to the seamless development of native applications.
These were the top 8 reasons why businesses are going for native app development and are changing their existing cross-platform applications to native ones. Now, you must also want to transfer your app to native technology, right? Well, you must know that the process of app migration is not a piece of cake and involves various challenges. The next section will cover these challenges in detail, so make sure to read carefully.
Common Challenges in App Migration
Investor’s Doubts
In many cases, businesses take financial support from external sources like investors for their app development project’s funding. Moreover, if you are building an app for your large-scale organization, the shareholders and directors govern most of the investment decisions.
In this scenario, migrating your mobile app from cross-platform to native technology can be a challenge. You will need to convince the investors and clarify all their doubts about the decision. This can be even more difficult if your investors are not aware of the how-tos of technology. This factor can even result in your migration plan getting called off.
Data Transfer
Applications accumulate a large quantity of user data throughout their usage. This data is highly valuable to businesses and often serves as the foundation for strategic planning. This makes data migration a critical factor and a potential challenge while migrating a mobile application.
To elaborate, an error in migrating data can result in data loss, which can significantly affect your business. Moreover, data often ends up corrupted and, many times, breached, which can result in tremendous market distrust. As a result, it is essential to have a solid plan for data migration to ensure that none of the data is lost or corrupted during app migration.
Business Continuity
Most of the businesses that plan migration are concerned about the loss of business during the time of actual migration. This is especially the case with businesses that operate completely online, as their sales go on pause for certain days. However, a good app migration is one that enables seamless business continuity throughout the process.
Before shutting down your previous application, you must ensure that the newly developed application is functional and well-performing. This way, you can reduce the time it will take to migrate your mobile app and resume your business activities in a short time span, therefore minimizing the loss of potential revenue.
Additional Investment
Migrating an app from cross-platform technology to native technology can be a cost-intensive affair. The actual cost of migrating the app is determined by various factors like:
- Number of OS markets you wish to target
- Application’s complexity
- The developer working on the migration
- Development location, etc.
As a result, thoroughly budgeting your migration is an essential step and can protect your business from various hurdles in the later stages of the app migration process.
Now that you are aware of the potential challenges you can face while migrating your mobile application, you must be wondering, ‘how to undertake seamless and fail-proof app migration?’, right? Well, we have an answer to this solution, which we have thoroughly discussed in the next section.
How to Undertake Seamless App Migration?
It is clear by now that app migration is a challenging process that requires high technical expertise. Moving your app from cross-platform technology to the native one is a task better left to expert hands. For this reason, we discourage undertaking your app’s migration by yourself. The best option is to hire a development outsourcing agency and benefit from its technical expertise and vast pool of talent. Speaking factually, 70% of businesses prefer to outsource their design and development requirements to an agency.
At present, most the development agencies offer services for app migration and are well-versed in the technical aspects of the same. Moreover, these agencies have years of experience in developing digital products for businesses operating in different industries and are, therefore, the best match for your business requirements. Moving further, we will discuss the steps of hiring an outsourcing agency to make it easy for you to find a reliable development partner.
Steps to Hire an Agency
Search
Look for the best design and development agencies on platforms like Clutch and GoodFirms. You can also do a simple Google search to find the top development agencies offering app migration services.
Shortlist
Once you have made a list of agencies that are at par with your requirements, you must shortlist them on the basis of their experience, portfolio, and client testimonials. This will save you time that would otherwise be spent on pitching to a large number of agencies.
Pitch
After narrowing down the list of suitable agencies, you must pitch your requirement to them and ask for their input. This often includes visiting the company’s website and filling out the ‘Contact Us’ form, among many other ways.
Review
Once you have pitched your requirements, the agencies you have shortlisted in step 3 will revert back to you with their offers. This often includes the project specifications, overall time and cost, and other solutions that can further enhance your product.
Select & Finalize
Based on the solutions received from the agencies, you must select one agency. More than often, businesses use development cost as the only judging criteria in this step. However, you must know that ROI in app development is high, and therefore, you will get ample returns by investing in your native application.
Close Deal
Upon finalizing an agency, you must connect with them and close the deal. This often includes signing a contract and an NDA with the agency. Once you have closed the deal, the agency will start working on the project and will give a time-to-time update on the migration process.
This was it for the process of hiring a development agency for your app migration requirements. Now that you know how to find a partner for migrating your mobile app, you can go ahead and start migrating your application.
Summing It Up
The benefits of the native approach clearly outshine cross-platform development and make it an ideal way of developing mobile applications. However, if you are a business that has already undertaken app development with cross-platform technology, you can still migrate your app to native technology.
App migration is a complex process that includes numerous challenges. However, by thoroughly planning app migration and clearly outlining your requirements, you can seamlessly migrate your app to native technology. Furthermore, by hiring an experienced development partner, you can further ease the migration process and ensure the best results for your mobile application. This will ensure great business success and a delightful user experience and will boost your business’s revenue in the long run.
