Nowadays mobile applications are very important part of any business. In this tech world, companies are competing to provide their products or services at the best. Amidst this competition mobile apps do have a great importance. Introduction of hybrid framework like React native, Flutter makes app development much easier for the developers. Thus, all entrepreneurs are now ready to develop apps for their business on a small investment.
Before 2015, companies were not ready to build an app for their business. One of the main reason behind this was high investment for development because at that time only ios native and android native development were there for building an app which means companies need to hire both ios developers and android developers to develop and maintain their apps. For small startups that was not possible anyway. Microsoft introduced a cross-platform named “Xamarin” in 2011 but they fail to give more updations and support for the platform. Also, it had occasional crashing of apps and was incompatible with some features as well. As Xamarin could not satisfy the developers, they had to stick on with native platforms.
Google introduced Kotlin which is highly promising and replaced java in android native. It was a good move by Google to introduce Kotlin at that time as basic Java faced some compatible and security issues.
Kotlin was very reliable, less buggy & easy to learn but it is different from java, so developers faced difficulties to switch into kotlin. Meanwhile Facebook introduced React native and that was the turning point of app development industry. Kotlin could not establish more because of React native’s highly promising features, ease of implementation & less number of kotlin professionals in the market. A lot of developers/companies choose React native instead of ios/android native platforms. Companies found it very cost effective as they need only React native developers for both ios and android app development. Also, it is less time consuming when compared to other app development frameworks/platforms.
Google did not give up on this competition as they introduced another hybrid framework named as “Flutter”. That was another massive turning point in app development as well. A lot of developers started development in Flutter because it is much more easy to develop, high performance, powerful community and also it was compatible with latest android, ios versions. Many companies need Google Maps implementation, live location, Gmail login etc. to be included in their apps. This gives much more acceptance to Flutter as it is originated from Google.
Both frameworks made a lot of changes to app development industry. There were a lot of issues while we’re using ios & android native platforms as it needs separate coding for bug fix or updations. For every updation, developers need to update both ios & android codes which was a time consuming task. Also, some features were incompatible as well. Introduction of Flutter, React native fixes these kind of issues as it needs only one specific code. Flutter is written in Dart language which is safe, concise and very simple to make production level applications. It is difficult to tell which one is better now but React native finds difficult to implement some google/other services in mobile apps. But both have its own advantages as both are from two Tech giants and we can expect a lot of updations on these two frameworks in coming months.
However, introduction of latest technologies like hybrid frameworks, cloud computing etc. made application development and deployment much easier than earlier which produces a lot of good quality applications in the market. This kind of competition between world class companies is good as it would bring a lot of good applications, common people could meet their needs on their fingertips.
