In the 21st century, we all are going through a digital revolution. To be more specific, Smartphone revolution! I am not exaggerating this fact, as it is clear from a recent survey which states:

“India will overtake the US as the second largest market for smartphones in the world by 2016. India will exceed 200 million (20 crores ) smartphone users by 2016.”

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Don’t you think it is the best opportunity for small and medium scale enterprises to enter into the area of digital business, especially who leads existing business and need to reach new heights?  This is definitely the right time for all the SMBEs to start using mobile phone applications for their business development. If you hesitate now, that will be a bad decision you have ever made!

You should provide an option for the customers to get your goods or services through their mobile phones. A good mobile application can make a tremendous change in your business and make your business easy to access Anytime! Anywhere!. In this case, a hybrid app development will be the right choice.

What is Hybrid Mobile App?

A hybrid app is a mobile application in which the same app can be worked in different mobile operating systems like Android, iOS, Windows, etc., and even in browsers (Mozilla, Chrome, IE, etc.). It is the same as mobile applications for users, which can be installed from App Store or Google Play store. But technically it’s different, its works with a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Usually, mobile apps are built using own tools. Once the application is built for iOS, it can’t be installed with Android and vice versa. Here comes the difference of hybrid applications. These are hosted inside a native application that uses mobile platform’s Web View which provides access to capabilities like camera, contacts, accelerometer, etc. or it is a combination of both native applications and web applications. Thus, these applications can work on specific platforms as well as multiple platforms. Here is the comparison between native, hybrid and web apps:

Stay Informed- Native Vs Hybrid Vs HTML5 Mobile Apps

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Benefits of making app on Multiple Platforms

There are 1.4 billion (140 crores) active Android devices worldwide and 1 billion (100 crores) Apple users and others using Windows. So it’s not easy to make applications for each operating system and maintain them separately at an early stage of the business. This is where hybrid applications work for you. It can be worked everywhere but can be maintained in one place.

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Benefits of Hybrid Mobile Apps for Small Business 

– Cost effective

As we build a single application to use different devices, the app development cost will be very less since same code can work on all devices (iOS, Android, Windows). This again increases the speed of development and reduces the maintenance cost.

Apart from this in future, if any changes are to be made to the application, then, you can bravely go for it as there is no need to make changes for all the devices which the application work for.

– Resource Availability

As I mentioned before, it works based on HTML and JavaScript. So a normal web developer can develop a hybrid app with an extra training.

– Speed

It is known that a hybrid app is a lot faster than a native app, but what is not common knowledge is that it is also a lot faster than a mobile web app. The speed of this app is good and unless it requires large graphics, it does not even require network communication, which is another cause of the slowdown.

– Offline Use

Hybrid mobile apps, like native apps, use a device’s API to store data offline. This proves to be a big advantage for customers having poor connectivity or who are watching their data costs.

– User Experience

Websites can look absolutely different on every computer and you might get an idea of this by using distinct browsers on different computers. Same thing applies to mobile web and it is not good for branding or user experience.

Does Hybrid Mobile Apps Have a Future?

Hybrid app development is one of the most growing areas of IT now. There are many hybrid app frameworks that have access to more devices. So, in the coming future, the hybrid app can work like a native app. Future is of hybrid everywhere!

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Here are eight most popular frameworks that are widely used for developing hybrid mobile apps:

  • jQuery Mobile- It’s a robust mobile development framework that supports a wide range of different platforms, from a regular desktop, smartphone, tablet, or an e-reader device like Nook or Kindle.
  • PhoneGap– This tool lets us build a mobile app without the native programming language; instead we can use a framework like jQuery Mobile. It will compile your app using the platform’s SDK and will be ready to install on the platform it supports.
  • Xamarin– It’s one of the most popular frameworks that is known for its multifarious benefits like building mobile apps faster, delivering a native platform experience, developing code using a full-featured IDE, etc.
  • Titanium AppceleratorOne of the most powerful frameworks, it uses pure JavaScript approach like Sencha Touch, but unlike Sencha Touch, this one converts JavaScript to native code.
  • IONIC- An open source framework, this framework incorporates a library of mobile-optimized CSS, JS and HTML constituents, and tools that assist in creating apps that are extremely interactive. 
  • Onsen UI– It features a large collection of ready to use components that allow you to build mobile, tablet as well as desktop versions of your apps. It also allows you to write apps in HTML5 and JavaScript.
  • Framework 7- The cool thing about this framework is that it doesn’t have external dependencies like Angular or React, and still manages to make apps look and feel native, with properly styled components and animations.
  • Sencha Touch- This framework consists of a broader range of products that work right off the bat. There are many themes, built-in MVC system and components to build effective hybrid apps.
  • React Native- As the name implies, its purpose is to build proper native apps, instead of creating hybrid ones that run in a Webview. Development, however, is still done completely via JavaScript and React.

Stay Informed- List of Frameworks that a Mobile App Developer Must Know

Wrapping Up:

In this digital era, having hybrid mobile app for your business definitely, give you an edge over your competitors. With the help of hybrid mobile apps, you enhance the reach of your goods and services that are too at a low cost. For a successful hybrid mobile app, a business needs efficient and cost effective mobile application development services.

With 6+ years of domain expertise, PixelCrayons is providing end-to-end hybrid app development services with the help of skilled and dedicated mobile app developers. If you have any query related to mobile app development, you can contact us and our experts will get back to you in no time.  

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