Contact us anytime to know more — Abhishek P., Founder & CFO CISIN
The app industry is thriving on smartphone users. Fun fact is, the technology has almost completely captivated us.
If for a minute you look up from your screen and observe people around you, most of them will have their eyes glued to their screen. The amount of time spent on the phone is equal to the amount of time spent using applications.
Jessie wakes up every morning with the help of a mobile alarm app, exercises and checks her health status with the help of a healthcare app, goes through the news on a news application, quickly orders breakfast through food delivery apps, and travels to work in a cab booked on a transport app.
Meanwhile, in the cab, while going through her daily work, she marks the important tasks to do on the Notes app and goes through the news and market updates on news apps. She uses different apps to organize her work throughout the day and comes back home again by cab booked on the transport app.
She talks to her close ones through contact apps, watches the shows streaming on entertainment apps, and gets back to her bed. This routine is followed by most of the millennials which clearly depicts their app-dependent lifestyle. Not only millennials but most people of any age group using smartphones have an app-dependent routine.
Do you want to develop a web app? You can take the help of a PWA development company that has been helping businesses to develop such apps.
Now, you might think what is in an application that makes life so simple and easy? Well, the credit for this goes to the framework that is used while developing a mobile app.
We shall know about a framework in detail but before that let’s know about applications and their types:
What Is An App?
An app or application is software that can be installed and run on devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and computers.
Here we will be discussing mobile applications. People spend significant hours of their day using applications. The increasing use of the internet and new innovations have raised bars for mobile application development.
Developers are now integrating advanced technologies in applications as per demand and requirements.
The Key Mobile Apps And Mobile App Development Statistics
Mobile apps are expected to generate $189 billion in revenue by 2020. The Apple app store has 2.2 million apps available for download.
There are 2.8 million apps available for download on the Google Play Store.
21% of millennials open an app more than 50 times a day.
There will be a 25% increase in global app downloads between 2018 and 2022.
In mobile application development, the ongoing trend is that of integrating advanced technologies. As per Statista, a 2018 research survey says that 23.15 billion devices are functioning worldwide right now.
As per Forbes, their total cost is $170570000000. The yearly growth of the usage of the Internet of Things in most of these devices is 27%.
In 2018, global mobile app revenues amounted to over 365 billion U.S. dollars. In 2023, mobile apps are projected to generate more than 935 billion U.S dollars in revenues.
The Types Of Mobile Applications On The Basis Of Technology
Initially, mobile phones used to have few applications limited to talking and chatting. But, with time, the app industry has witnessed a huge surge.
Applications have evolved with time and according to the need. Apps are now not only limited to fun and chats but have business values. A Progressive Web App development company has promptly helped businesses to develop PWAs embedded with useful features.
Mainly there are three types of mobile applications:
-
Native Applications: Native applications are traditional apps that can be easily found on app stores.
Users just need to search for an application and install it to run it on a device. These apps are called native as they are developed on the basis of specific platforms. Developers need to build different apps for different applications.
Native applications are high performing and give a good user experience. But with time, due to complexity in building and lack of flexibility, native applications are losing their charm. This has led to the discovery of more customer-centric as well as developer-centric applications.
-
Hybrid Apps: Hybrid applications, as the name suggests, are a combination of native apps and web apps.
Hybrid apps resemble native applications but are embedded with the features of web apps. A hybrid app is not platform-specific. The app, once developed, can be used on multiple platforms. You can use it across various platforms such as iOS, Android, and Windows.
Hybrid applications are in-demand due to their fast development process and less development cost. A single developer can build an app that can be used by users on different devices. It is easy to maintain hybrid apps, as users need not worry about updates.
But, hybrid apps are a little less performing and hence the quality of user experience reduces.
-
Web Apps: The era of app development belongs to web apps. Progressive Web Apps or web apps were first introduced by Google in 2017.
PWAs provide enriched experiences to users but are limited to the browser. PWAs behave exactly like native apps. You can send push notifications, have the app icon on the home screen, and work offline on it.
It helps to save storage space for the user and has less development cost. Web apps are highly flexible and can be accessed from any device. An internet connection is enough to run web apps.
Usually HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. If you are thinking of going for Progressive Web Apps for your business, it is a great idea. If you need any help you can get in touch with a Progressive Web App development company.
Categories Of Mobile Applications
Mobile applications have touched almost every sphere of life. We rely on different applications every day. Apps are used by users to save as well as kill time.
Apple’s app store categorizes apps under 24 categories and Google Play categories mobile apps in 33 types, though only 7 types of mobile applications have reached users. Here we have listed the different categories of application:
-
Gaming Apps: As per statistics, gaming apps constitute 24% of applications on the app store. Gaming applications are mostly used to kill time and target a large audience.
A mobile app development company has been actively helping businesses to develop an application that plays a prominent role in making a business scalable.
-
Educational Apps: Educational apps have almost reshaped the education system. With the inclination towards the digital space, the demand for educational apps is significantly increasing.
It not only helps with academic education but significantly helps in learning co-curricular activities and plays a crucial role in easy skill development.
-
Entertainment Apps: Entertainment apps like social media apps and video streaming apps have their own audience.
Entertainment applications help users to refresh their minds and have fun and are hence highly engaging.
-
Business Apps: Business applications are the second most in-demand applications. Business applications comprising numerous fruitful activities are also referred to as productivity apps.
The uses of business apps vary from buying, selling, and tracking email campaigns and work updates. Firms are moving towards customized applications to make the business scalable.
-
Lifestyle Apps: Lifestyle applications help users with shopping, developing & maintaining healthy routine habits, daily workout, weight loss, and many more.
These apps are helpful when users want to do their daily tasks or have fun. Lifestyle applications are designed to enrich users’ personal lifestyle experience.
-
Travel Apps: Travel applications like Uber and Ola have made traveling a lot simpler and time-saving.
With just a few clicks on the application, the vehicle that you book will be at your doorstep. This not only saves time but also ensures a safe and comfortable journey. Some travel apps work as road map guides as well.
-
Utility Apps: Utility apps are frequently used by users on a daily basis. These apps are used for hiring a service or getting a health checkup done.
They significantly help users to save time and are used to perform tasks quickly and easily.
-
Delivery Apps: In our hectic schedule, it is quite difficult to take time out to go to the market for shopping or purchasing daily essentials, or to go to restaurants for having food.
Seeing the need to save time, delivery apps were developed to increase the reach of products and services to customers. The app industry is at its best currently. Are you thinking of developing an app? If you are finding it difficult, you can take the help of a mobile app development company.
Development Of An Application
Application development is the procedure of developing a computer program that helps to perform multiple tasks. An app building process comprises gathering requirements, designing, prototypes, testing, implementation, and integration.
Application development consists of programming languages, frameworks, databases, and more.
What Is A Framework?
A framework is a software that helps in building applications. As the name suggests, it acts as a base for building applications.
A framework is built and tested by experts and then is used to develop applications. A framework helps to develop highly functional applications. Framework development is an arduous process. It comprises a plethora of complex tasks.
Frameworks are used in application development to accomplish the commands given to the application by the user.
The Importance Of Frameworks In Developing A Mobile Application
A framework helps developers to take charge of the complete software development process. The software framework provides ample advantages.
Some of them are easy-to-use code and developing applications with fewer bugs. Easy-to-integrate advanced technologies help to make an application more reliable and better performing, the testing and debugging of code becomes easier with robust frameworks, and plays a crucial role in saving time of the developer.
Types Of Frameworks
The market is flooded with ample frameworks, all having certain specific characteristics. A developer needs to look for the framework that best fits their requirements.
Different software frameworks are used for different genres. Are you thinking of developing a web app? It is recommended that you get in touch with a PWA development company. Here is a list of types of software framework with examples:
-
Web application framework: Angular, Laravel, etc.
-
DataScience framework: Apache Spark, PyTorch, TensorFlow, etc
-
Mobile app development framework: Xamarin, Ionic, Flutter, etc.
The Top 5 Frameworks And How They Assist App Developers In Accomplishing Their Tasks
1. Swiftic
It is one of the best frameworks for developing iOS applications. Swiftic has easy navigation features, so it is easy for developers to understand its working and to develop applications.
Here, it also gives you a 30-day money-back guarantee if you are not in the mood of availing of the plan anymore. Apart from this Swiftic provides free service for up to six months if you do not get output. Some of the features of Swiftic are mentioned below:
-
It sends an engaging push notification
-
Provides lots of offers such as loyalty cards, in-app coupons, etc.
-
It allows easy integration of third-party components.
-
Swiftic offers advanced analysis and helps to build customer engaging apps.
Read the blog- What are the benefits of outsourcing mobile app development?
2. Ionic
Ionic is a front-end, free, open-source HTML framework. It helps developers to build a highly interactive application with the help of libraries, tools, and UI components.
It is built on top of AngularJS and Cordova. According to the official definition of Ionic, “Ionic is an HTML5 mobile app development framework targeted at building hybrid mobile apps.
Think of Ionic as the front-end UI framework that handles the look and feel and UI interactions that make your app compelling. It is kind of like Bootstrap for Native but with the support for a broad range of common native mobile components, slick animations, and a beautiful design.
Hybrid app development services providers have been helping businesses to develop high performing applications using Ionic.
Some of the prominent features of the Ionic framework are mentioned below:
-
Cordova plugin
-
CSS components
-
Ionic view
-
Angular JS: Ionic uses it to develop highly engaging single-page applications.
Ionic helps app developers in the following ways:
-
Saves Time: The Ionic framework helps to build hybrid apps, and hence it is easy for developers to use it.
A single application can be used on different platforms such as iOS, Firefox OS, Android, Windows phone, and so on. This significantly helps to save time for developers. Are you thinking of developing a hybrid app? It is a great idea, and if you need any help with it you can get in touch with hybrid app development services.
-
Easy To Update: Ionic is embedded with a simple layout and a pre-app setup, and hence it is quite easy to start an application that is built on Ionic.
Hybrid apps are easy to maintain as well as are very cleanly built. This makes the application easy to update.
-
Strong Support Group: The Ionic development team along with the Google development team is continuously working to make the framework better.
The support group is ready to help developers at any hour.
3. React Native
React Native is one of the coolest and the most hotshot technologies right now. It is a JavaScript framework that is popularly used for developing cross-platform mobile applications.
For beginners, a cross-platform application is a single application that can be used on multiple platforms. Android and iOS are the two most used operating systems for mobile application development. iOS applications use the Swift programming language whereas Android generally uses Java.
Hence, to make the process convenient, a cross-platform app development framework by Mark Zuckerberg came to light. React Native was launched by Facebook back in 2015. It is widely used by developers due to its amazing features that help developers to easily accomplish tasks.
Mobile application development services have been actively helping businesses to develop dynamic mobile applications. Let us have a look at the features of React Native:
-
Multiple Platforms: One of the best features of React Native is that it has successfully replaced the conventional way of using a different programming language for different platforms such as Swift for iOS, C# for Windows, and Java for android.
Here, the application that is built using React Native can be used on multiple platforms.
-
UI-Centered: React Native is a highly responsive framework. It has great UI designs built for highly engaging platforms.
Developers need to only arrange already built building blocks.
-
Community: Since 2015 the framework has successfully built strong and immense community support.
-
Saves Time: The React Native framework helps to develop an application in a very short span of time.
-
Node Package Manager For Installation: After developing an application, comes its deployment. The installation of an application is quite a tedious process, especially for beginners.
But with the help of React Native NPM, it is quite easy to install an application due to its easy-to-learn commands.
Read the blog- Why you must get a hybrid app now for robust, user-friendly mobile apps, easier & faster development.
4. Xamarin
Xamarin is an open-source framework that is supported by Microsoft. Xamarin is used for modern mobile applications for different platforms such as iOS, Android, and Windows.
The applications that are developed using Xamarin are highly secure and scalable and are equipped with useful features. These applications can function on different devices such as tablets, mobile phones, and laptops. Xamarin uses C# to write code.
Are you thinking of developing a mobile application? Well, then it is time to jump in. If you want any help with it, you can contact mobile application development services providers. It gives a Native-like feel to users.
Some top features of Xamarin are mentioned below:
-
Programming Language: Xamarin uses the latest version of C++, which is C#, to code applications.
This programming language is object-oriented, limits error, and is functional on most platforms.
-
.NET Framework: Xamarin uses a .NET framework that comprises of C# and related libraries. Most of the codebase that is shared is business-specific, and only 10% of it has platform-specific UI.
Apps that use Xamarin provide a rich user experience.
-
Xamarin.forms: Xamarin allows 100% code sharing, which helps to develop the UI of multiple platforms at one go.
This is a unique feature in Xamarin.forms unlike Xamarin Android or Xamarin iOS.
-
Compilation: Xamarin iOS and Xamarin Android follow two different compilation strategies. But, when it comes to dealing with issues such as garbage collection, platform interoperability, or memory interoperability, then both the compilation methods are optimized and automated.
-
Xamarin Project Structure: Xamarin uses a single code base to build applications. It is easy to fix errors in Xamarin due to the single codebase.
Xamarin runs with Visual Studio, which helps to develop iOS apps even for Windows desktops. The reuse feature of Xamarin helps to develop an app within just a few weeks. Visual Studio helps to create powerful IDE embedded with amazing features like auto code completion etc.
5. Native Scripts
NativeScript is an open-source framework that is used to develop a cross-platform app for both Android and iOS. NativeScript uses JavaScript to build an app, and as the name suggests is used to build a native application.
Native apps have access to most of the things that users have on their phones such as contacts, cameras, GPS, etc. The Triodos Bank has been successfully using JavaScript. Cross-platform app development is high in demand due to its flexible features and ease of development.
The features of NativeScript that assist app developers in accomplishing their tasks are:
-
Cost-Effective: A lot of development tools are free, and hence it is cost-effective for developers to use this framework.
NativeScript helps developers to save money by offering free licensing through Apache 2. It is an open-source framework hence can be used free of cost.
-
Easy To Learn: Since NativeScript is related to JavaScript so it is quite easy to catch this framework if the developer knows JavaScript.
It also gives the flexibility to share code across any device. Here platform-specific APIs are present so developers need not learn the Cordova plugin.
Summing Up
In the era of smart technology, where applications are available for almost everything, it is quite tedious for a developer to select the best fit according to the purpose.
So, to help developers here we have mentioned the best five frameworks for mobile application development. We are living in a cut-throat competitive world, where you need to be up-to-date, knowledgeable, and highly skilled to be at the top.
A framework plays a very crucial role in developing fast, efficient, engaging, and high performing applications. If you run a business, then it is time for you to integrate applications into your business. You can take the help of cross-platform development services to get an app developed.
