The mobile app development industry is highly active and is growing at a rapid pace. The availability of an infinite number of smartphone models is making the task even more challenging for developers to meet customers’ expectations. To stay ahead in this competitive race, it is necessary to understand the challenges, which are unique to developing applications for various platforms.
Current Challenges in Mobile App Development
There are various challenges associated with mobile app development. The major ones are:
1. Device Fragmentation
In the past, it was easy to develop apps for a specific hardware platform. However, with an infinite number of smartphone models available in the market today, developers have to factor in different resolutions and pixel densities while designing their app. If we consider iOS alone, there are four popular iPhone models and three iPad models. With such fragmentation across iOS, Android and Windows devices, developers must resize their app UI using different layouts for each device.
2. Code Reusability
It is important to reuse previously developed modules or components of an application in order to save development time and resources. Unfortunately, the concept of reusability doesn’t work in mobile apps due to various hardware and software configurations. Reused code may produce unexpected results and errors on different devices and platforms, so it is necessary to build separate modules for each device architecture.
3. App Performance and Battery Life
To deliver a great user experience, developers must focus on app performance and battery life as well. Different apps have different requirements with respect to network speed, processing speed, and more. To provide optimum performance across different platforms, developers need to test their app on multiple devices with different hardware capabilities.
4. Resource Management
Apps require resources like memory, CPU and storage space to perform various functions. Operating systems also use resources on the device for other tasks, which makes it challenging for mobile app developers to meet performance requirements. To address this issue, developers can choose cross-platform tools or develop native apps for specific device architectures.
5. App Security and Privacy
As it is necessary to collect sensitive information like credit card details, passwords or contacts from users to make an app successful, security and privacy issues take precedence over other development tasks. Cross-platform apps are likely to face greater security threats due to lack of sufficient testing. To ensure data security, developers can go for native app development which provides access to advanced APIs and device security features.
6. Testing Process
Testing is an integral part of the mobile app development process, as it enables developers to identify bugs before releasing the app to the market. However, testing is more challenging for cross-platform apps due to lack of versatile debugging tools and platforms.
Mobile App Developers’ Perspective on Challenges
Cross-platform app development tools are likely to face problems with performance, battery life, and security issues as they provide support only for core OS functionalities. The availability of separate modules for each device architecture results in increased development costs and time. Moreover, such tools may not support new OS releases immediately, which means developers must maintain multiple code bases for different OS versions.
Developing native apps is a better choice as they provide access to higher level APIs and security features across multiple platforms. However, with an increase in the number of mobile platforms, app development becomes challenging due to an increased risk of introducing bugs in the source code.
How to Overcome Challenges in Mobile App Development?
Most mobile app development challenges can be overcome by using hybrid or cross-platform development tools that provide native performance with greater scalability across multiple devices. Such tools allow developers to reuse their previous work, reduce the number of bugs and save time on app development.
As mobile app users expect more from their devices, it is necessary for developers to focus on performance and battery life as well. Using these tools helps in testing apps across multiple platforms and gives a clear insight into resource consumption at different levels.
These tools provide access to higher level APIs which, in turn, ensures better support for the latest device features and OS versions. They also allow developers to focus on core tasks by providing a simplified development environment that reduces costs and time-to-market.
As a developer, you can choose from a plethora of cross-platform tools to meet your requirements which have become an essential part of every mobile app development strategy.
What is the Future of Mobile App Development?
App development tools provide greater compatibility and higher performance across different mobile platforms. With increasing demand for cross-platform mobile apps, more such tools will be introduced in the future to help developers overcome challenges with developing mobile apps, and deliver high quality apps for a wider audience base. As we move towards an era of multiple devices with exciting features, it is evident that native app development will be supplemented by cross-platform tools as they provide compatibility and consolidate resources.
Sunvera Software develops next-level software applications from start-to-finish. We are a premier software and mobile app development agency specializing in healthcare mobile app development, custom mobile app development, telehealth software, sales dashboards, custom mobile app development services, retail software development, supply-chain software, ecommerce, shopify, web design, iBeacon apps, security solutions and unified access software.
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