iOS and Android are the world’s most popular mobile platforms. Relatively fewer numbers of users are using Blackberry and Windows powered devices. Your mobile app must be adaptable on all the major platforms to ensure that it can reach out to all categories of potential customers. After all, the best interests of your business can only be served when you can reach out to maximum number of users through your app.
Here is a list of the benefits that you can have by opting for cross platform applications AKA Hybrid apps.
1. Greater Market Reach
The more platforms you cover, the more people you’ll be able to reach. Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android are gaining new users everyday. Developing an application that runs on both iPhone and Android gives you the added advantage of having access to a much larger pool of potential users. Also, the behaviour of customers (or buyers) are different on different platform. iPhone users tend to have a higher purchasing power, as compared to Android users. However, Android users tend to download apps more often than iPhone users.
2. Easy Marketing
When you have a bigger number of fans, marketing becomes easier in the sense that you don’t have to create niche messages to cater to a specific set of people.You have the liberty of marketing the cross platform application on various media resources. You are free to come up with generalised messages that will appeal to larger sections of your potential user base.
3. Efficiency in Processes
It is easier to maintain and deploy changes when your team is developing an application that runs across all platforms. Updates will immediately get synced across all devices and platforms. This will save you money.
4. Uniform UI & UX
The overall design and feel of a cross platform app can be maintained across various platforms, if there is a single code running on all. When you are designing different apps, it can be hard to sync two different development teams to make the same app. Uniformity of brand image remains intact with a simple cross platform app.
5. Reduced Development Costs
With cross platform mobile app development, your development costs are bound to come down, as such development models are more flexible and faster to execute. As a single process of development can target all platforms, you don’t need to employ staff for individual ones. There is significant reduction in the maintenance costs, because the applications can originate from single codebase having single development skill-set.
6. Testing the Waters
You have to keep in mind that mobile app development needs lot of planning. If you plunge headlong into cross platform app development, you many not get the right results. You have to do adequate research before you decide what kind of platform you should build for. If your business needs are met by ensuring that your app has access to the largest possible pool of users, then you have to opt for cross-platform development. But if you are targeting only a niche group of users, then you have to develop the app for the platform that your target group is expected to use.