The world of mobile app development has been bursting at the seams with opportunities these last few years, as companies look for the next horizon of productivity gains and new revenue streams to fuel their growth. But along with the opportunities tied to each mobile platform comes the responsibility of ensuring a secure and seamless experience for the end user. This begs the question: How can companies build on multiple platforms, while still being responsive to market opportunities? The answer is cross-platform app development.
As the name implies, cross-platform app development tools make it easy for developers to share code across multiple platforms, rather than starting from scratch every time. Among the benefits of this approach are reduced software costs, the ability to harness a developer’s existing skills set, and faster time to market with new apps and updates.
There are a variety of cross-platform solutions out there, but Apache Cordova and Xamarin are perhaps the most widely known.
(And in case you missed the news out of Build 2016, Microsoft recently acquired Xamarin and has since made it available across its Visual Studio offerings. As you might gather, we’re pretty excited about this development. You can find out more on John Montgomery’s announcement post.)
Obviously, the cross-platform solution you pick depends on your company’s needs. That’s why we wrote A Way Out of the Mobile App Development Conundrum, an ebook (registration required) that walks you through the ramifications of native vs. cross-platform apps, as well as the differences between Corvova and Xamarin. On April 28th from 10-11am PDT, we also invite you to a free webinar with Ryan Salva, Principal PM Manager for Visual Studio Tools, who will talk you through the options and demonstrate our technology. Register now.
These side-by-side comparisons of the two solutions will make it easier to determine which one is the best fit for you.
And if you want more information about cross-platform app development in general, check out the Visual Studio Mobile Platforms page.
 | Bharat Bhat (@bharatsbhat), Marketing Manager, Microsoft Developer Tools & Services (IDEs, Code Editors, Dev Opsy cloud stuff) Bharat believes that the tools Microsoft offers today are the best out there and can help developers create amazing apps on any OS—cloud services and tooling included. In his past life, Bharat was a Java developer for 10 years in NYC, working mostly on financial transaction platforms and open source web projects. |