With 3.6 billion smartphone users worldwide, currently, mobile applications have become the most effective channels to reach and attract customers.
With stronger internet penetration, the number of smartphone users is going to increase many fold in the near future. From being an additional budget draining task within many companies in the past, mobile application development has turned into something more fundamental as more and more users prefer using mobile applications over mobile websites. The reasons that make mobile applications so attractive are,
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Mobile apps offer better personalization:
By letting users set up their preferences at the start, the mobile apps offer customized content to users based on their interests, location, usage behavior, and more. -
Ease of sending notifications:
The push and in-app notifications are a simple and exciting alternative that offers less intrusive communications with app users. -
Making use of mobile device features:
Mobile applications offer a more interactive user experience by making use of features like a camera, compass, accelerometer, GPS, phone calls, contact list, etc., in mobile devices.
Recent reports from 2019-2020 show that an estimated 1500 new mobile apps are added to the App Store, and 2300 new mobile apps are added to the Play Store. These numbers are set to increase more and more as companies realize the benefits of mobile applications in increasing their brand value and improving customer loyalty. Hence, it is more important than ever to have a streamlined mobile application development process that can be followed to produce more such applications in a quicker timeline.
Mobile application development: The Process
Regardless of the size and scope of any project, the mobile application development process spans over six key phases given below. These are followed by freelance developers to big mobile application development companies to produce mobile apps as per requirements.
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Strategy:
The first step to evolve an idea into a successful app is to define a proper development strategy where the development teams will study and identify the prospective app users, conduct a deep research on their competition products, and establish clear goals and objectives for the entire mobile app development process. -
Analysis and Planning:
This is the stage where the ideas turn into an actual project. Start by defining use cases and identifying detailed functional requirements, followed by preparing a product roadmap that groups the mobile app requirement into delivery milestones. -
UI/UX Design:
To create an excellent user experience by making your mobile application user-friendly, interactive and intuitive is the fundamental goal of the mobile app UI/UX design. A good UI is a must to keep the app users engaged throughout. -
App Development:
This is the integral phase in the mobile application development process where the actual build-out starts. Usually, mobile applications are stacked up with three integral parts namely the back-end/server which stores and manages various application specific data, followed by an Application Programming Interface (API) which transfers data between the server and the front-end app and the mobile app front-end itself which the end-user will use. -
Testing:
Implementing a thorough Quality Assurance (QA) testing as a part of mobile application development process is vital to provide a seamless user experience by making the application more secure, stable, and usable. -
Deployment & Support:
The mobile applications are required to be submitted to the Apple App Store for iOS apps and Google Play Store for Android apps to commence the deployment process. Once the app is live, consider user feedback to improve your application and make it more users friendly.
With every new version of mobile platforms and mobile devices, the technologies in consideration and the mobile application development trends evolve at a greater pace. In such a rapidly changing environment, building mobile applications within a specified timeline and budget requires agility. Considering time-to-market to be the priority, it is essential to identify and improve areas in the mobile application development process to produce high-quality applications in a quick time frame.
Mobile applications: Cross-Platform vs. Native
Mobile applications can be broadly classified into two types, as cross-platform apps and native apps. Creating a mobile app that works well on various platforms refers to the Cross-Platform development process. Similarly, the development of mobile applications that is exclusive for a single platform refers to the Native app development process. The Cross-Platform development process is comparatively more cost-effective and less time-consuming when compared to the later, hence startups with less capital and time prefer the Cross-Platform mobile application development process that can be used to deploy their application in both Android and iOS platform simultaneously.
Xamarin, React Native and Flutter are the major tools available for the development and deployment of Cross-Platform applications. Amongst these applications, the Google backed open-source app development platform Flutter has swiftly acquired the top position compared to the rest with some revolutionary app development features that support the production of some extraordinary applications and a huge community of over 2 million developers as flag bearers of the product.
Flutter: An overview
Flutter is a Google-supported, open-source mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) that supports companies which are looking to develop mobile apps that are expressive and highly scalable. The advantages of flutter application development services are the accessible widgets, command-line tools, rendering engines and testing and API integration features, Flutter has it all to support all the six key phases of mobile application development process effectively. This single code-based tool makes it easier for developers to create robust mobile applications with native app-like end-user experience in a very short time frame. These benefits of flutter app development make the future of flutter applications something to look out for.
Features: Why Flutter is better than other cross-platform development tools?
Right development tools are essential factors that can either make or break a product, in this case, mobile applications. With better underlying language and SDK, the benefits of flutter are greater when compared to its alternatives by a long way. Major benefits of Flutter mobile application development service are given below,
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Flutter uses Dart as a programming language:
Dart offers consistency, standardization, simple management, and integration features that no other cross-platform mobile application development tools have. With Dart’s strong and compelling syntax that encourages powerful design and architecture, Flutter is widely preferred by developers and mobile application development companies to produce robust applications. -
Enhanced Development Process:
Flutter offers simple features that can be used by a mobile app developer to develop high-performance cross-platform applications as it operates on rendering libraries, graphics, and native binaries that are based on C/C++. -
Flutter has its Own Rendering Engine:
Skia is Flutter’s own rendering engine that makes the Flutter-based UI compatible on virtually any platform. This eliminates the need for changing the UI when switching on to the other platforms. -
Access to Native Features and SDK’s:
The third-party integrations, simple local codes, and application APIs streamlines the life-cycle of growth and simplifies the development process for native Flutter apps. -
Less Development Time:
The mobile applications can be customized using the readymade widgets put together by the Flutter team in no time, thereby removing the risk of writing codes for every widget from the beginning which saves a lot of time. -
Powerful Design Experience:
The custom widgets for both Android and iOS allow the user to feel a positive and intuitive user experience that can be expected only from native mobile applications. This intuitive UX and elegant UI using flutter platform can be developed in no time.
These features of flutter app development make it a go-to cross-platform mobile application development tool, which is also preferred by some of the big companies in the industry like Alibaba, Tencent, etc. Flutter is also an attractive tool to those startups on the other end of the spectrum due to the advanced features it offers and its ease of use.
Flutter for startups:
With the highly efficient and reliable array of ready-to-use widgets for quick and effective mobile application development and also the features like Hot Reload that makes app maintenance simpler, Flutter is considered to be the ideal mobile application development platform for startups. It will be an expensive option for startups to develop native mobile applications for different platforms separately, while with all the advantages of flutter app development it becomes easy to develop and deploy mobile apps on different platforms simultaneously. Some of the important benefits of using flutter in startups as the Mobile Application Development tool are given below,
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Cost-effective:
In mobile application development the time taken for development is directly proportional to the cost involved. With readymade widgets and features like ‘Hot Reload’ to eliminate recompilation when some instant changes are made in the backend saves a significant amount of development time, reducing the overall cost of flutter app development. -
Hot Reload’
is also the unique selling point of the Flutter platform that makes it more compatible with startups. -
Optimize usage of time:
Flutter saves time and effort of developers and mobile app development companies by enabling them to reuse the app codes for different apps. Without the need for rewriting the codes for Android and iOS platforms, as in the case of native app development and the effective testing features available in flutter, reduces the testing time thereby making Flutter app development faster. -
Greater experience:
Startups can come up with engaging enterprise grade applications with elegant UI and enhanced UX by making use of Android’s Material Design and Cupertino Widgets for iOS that are accessible in the Flutter mobile application development platform. -
Works well with Google Firebase:
Developers can integrate and leverage major services like hosting, cloud storage, and real-time database offered by Firebase with Flutter which then enables these startups and mobile application development companies to make redundant, scalable, and serverless application infrastructure by automating the entire app development process. This saves a lot of development time as the use of Google’s Firebase eliminates the need for building some backend support. This ability of flutter to seamlessly integrate with Google’s Firebase is one of the notable mobile app development trends. -
Preferred for developing MVP (Minimum Viable Product):
Startups running short of budget can make use of Flutters wide range of rich libraries and UI-Native widgets to build a Minimum Viable Product without any hassle. By managing the limited resources and budget for the time being, startups can come up with more advanced subsequent applications easily. This development of MVP can be considered as the most important advantage of flutter for startups. -
Single codebase development:
Flutter supports startups to develop a fully functional mobile application by transforming their ideas into user-friendly products that can run across various platforms like Android, iOS, or both using a single code-base. The mobile application developed in Flutter does not compromise in their performance when compared to similar native applications. This single codebase mobile application development is the future of flutter applications.
Startups can get real-time support from Flutter’s strong and thriving developer community for resolving any issues related to mobile applications. With more and more applications being developed using Flutter, it is comparatively easier to find and hire a Flutter developer today. With Flutter positioning itself as the go-to product for developing mobile applications for startups, the most obvious question that arises in your mind now is – “What is the cost of developing a mobile application in flutter?”
Flutter App Development – Cost
The development cost of any mobile application in flutter, irrespective of the platform it is being built upon depends completely on the complexity of the application on the whole and the total number of features that you want to include in the mobile app. Although, it is always better to make a list of all features before approaching a mobile application development company. Considering a tight budget in startups, it is better to start by using flutter for MVP to save the cost and gradually add more features as your customer base increases, or hiring a flutter developer and developing the mobile application in-house also can save some cost.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that in future the flutter application is going to dominate the mobile application development industry with its futuristic and enterprise-friendly features. The Fuchsia OS from Google is going to make flutter a more effective tool for app development in the near future as it minimizes the problems that arise during the mobile application development process. With the lesser development time and reduced development cost, flutter is the perfect choice for startups.
