Mobile Development Platforms | Aspire Enterprise Mobility Services

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Agenda

Market Research Native Mobile Platforms

Hybrid Mobile Platforms Conclusion

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Why to choose mobile platform

The number of mobile users has crossed the number of desktop users

and is ever increasing.




Why to choose mobile platform

The number of mobile users has crossed the number of desktop users

and is ever increasing.




Why Mobile App Over Responsive Web App

Responsive website has an advantage that it will work on all mobile

devices and all platforms and hence less efforts & expenditure.

Wait, what about speed of page and user accessibility? More complex

the page is, more the time it takes to load. Why, should we even

consider the loading time. Here’s an answer…




Advantages of Mobile App

Mobile Apps

Loads data quickly.

Stores data locally in device for long term.

Rich native user interface.

Performs faster than website.

Analytics firm Flurry has published data on mobile usage by US

consumers during Q1 2014:

Users spend more time on their mobile devices, an average of 2 hours

and 42 minutes per day against only 22 minutes per day with browser.

There were examples like Flipkart, SnapDeal had created & promote

separate app for mobile platform.


http://flurry.com/

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/109749/Apps-Solidify-Leadership-Six-Years-into-the-Mobile-Revolution









https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flipkart.android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.snapdeal.main



Which Mobile Platform to Target?

Statistics, Report shows Android and iOS users are containing the

large market share.






What to Target, iOS or Android ?

IOS Platform Advantages

The iOS market has some significant advantages over Android. While

it may not have Android’s global following, it is still incredibly popular in

the United States, particularly in urban areas like New York City and

Los Angeles.

If you are targeting American consumers iOS first is the way to go.

iOS is also the best choice for your first platform if your business

model relies on things like in-app purchases. iOS apps generate up to

four times as much revenue per-user than their Android counterparts.





IOS Platform Disdvantages

Closed Platform: iOS apps only run on Apple products so you can’t

take advantage of features (like NFC) available only on non-iOS

devices or market growth of non-iOS devices.

Market Growth: Today, iOS represents less than 15% of the total

smartphone market, Although the total market (“the whole pie”) is still

increasing at a fast rate, Android market growth outpaces iOS growth.

Approvals: The App Store’s app approval process is notoriously more

time consuming than Google Play’s process.





Android Platform Advantages

Open source.

If you have a cool idea, which needs lot of creative freedom, tricky

financial integrations, location tracking, hardware integrations, Android

will be good option.

Android provides built in api for google’s feature like google map, gmail

etc.

Material design.





Android Platform Disadvantages

Building for Android, most apps can get away without supporting the

Android 2.3.* branch now.

Because of the wide variety of different devices and iterations of the

operating system, there is a significant amount of fragmentation.

When you build an Android app you need to test it on several different

devices to ensure that there won’t be dependencies issues between

different versions.

Patent issues.





Verdict

If you have to target audience from US only then IOS platform should

be right option.

If you have a cool idea, which needs lot of creative freedom, tricky

financial integrations, location tracking, hardware integrations, Android

will be good option






Can I make mobile platform independent app?

There are tools available like cordova/phonegap, RhoMobile,

Appcelerator, WidgetPad which allow you to build an application

which runs on all mobile platforms like android, ios, windows phone,

blackberry.

These tools use the webview to apply the same effect on different

devices.

Amongst these, cordova is open source.




What is Cordova / Phonegap?




How Cordova / Phonegap Works?

Apache - Cordova is a set of device APIs that allows a mobile app

developer to access native device function such as the camera or

accelerometer from JavaScript.

Cordova is just local web page seen through full web-view.




What is Webview?

Webview can be

described as a view that

displays a web page.

Cordova applications are

implemented as a

browser-based WebView

within the native mobile

platform.




What About Native Features Like Camera, Device Id & Orientation?

Cordova provides plugins by that you can access native features.




Cordova Native Engine

Cordova native engine actually uses plugins which are written in native

code of each platform.

If your project uses orientation plugin from Cordova, it means a plugin

has native code of each platform. Cordova calls platform specific native

code itself.




What About Same UI in All Platforms?

There you have to use UI Frameworks like

Ionic Framework

Jquery mobile

Famo.us + AngularJS

Each framework has it’s own advantages and disadvantages, but in my

project I have used the Ionic Framework because it’s an open source,

“optimized” for AngularJS. It also provides a native UI for each platform.




Which Framework to Choose for Project?

jQuery UI is recommended for desktop applications only. It’s

performance hogs when compiled into mobile apps. jQuery Mobile in

particular imposes a lot of rigidness.

Famo.us + AngularJS is new kid on the mobile framework block and it

takes quite a while to understand how to get things that are done in the

"native“. AngularJS & Famo.us are released as a bundle.

Ionic Framework is relatively young. Since its release, it has gained a lot

of respect in the hybrid & mobile development community. Its

recommended because it provides consistent look in Android and iOS.




Why to Choose Iconic Framework?

The Ionic framework wraps the AngularJS framework; this is a huge

benefit as Ionic interacts beautifully with Angular.

More number of users gaining interest in ionic framework.

Native UI support.




Limitations of Cordova

We can use Cordova only for simple applications, if you want to build

gaming application the choice should be native code.

Cordova does not provide all native features; for ex. if you want to use

broadcast receiver feature of android then you have to make custom

plugin for that.

There are complications with linking to other apps like Google Maps.

No such good testing tools are available.




Limitation of Ionic Framework

Browser Limitation: If a browser does not support CSS transition (like

Android 2.3), you won't be able to use this feature on your project.

Ionic framework supports only Android and IOS platforms.

Good news is that support for Windows Phone and FirefoxOS support is

on their roadmap.




Our Experience

Built applications using frameworks like Ionic, AngularJS.




Challenges Faced to Build Hybrid App

No IDE available to build the Cordova project!!; We built all the Cordova

projects in “Sublime text-editor”.





There is no tool provided by Cordova for Automation testing. We’ve

used the external tool like Appium and Mocha to build automation tests.





There are more android versions. Each manufacturer modifies the OS

so it requires to test in all devices. But we tried to make code work in all

mobile devices.





As you use more directories,

the structure becomes more

complex.

And more memory is used for

data binding.

Since AngularJS is open

source, we have modified

directives like ng-repeat and

created custom directives to

improve the performance.




Conclusion

The next world would be of mobile users so if you want to reach

more audience, you must target mobile platforms and create mobile

first websites.

If you want to target all mobile platforms and have less complex

design then we recommended to choose hybrid platforms like

Cordova.

If you have more complex problem then it’s recommended to go the

native way.



Technology

Mobile Development Platforms | Aspire Enterprise Mobility Services