When your enterprise plans to launch an app, which path do you pick: Native app development or Cross-platform app development?
Native app each for android, iOS, Windows takes more effort but pays attention-to-details. On the contrary, developing a cross-platform application uses a single framework reducing time and cost efforts but seems likely to compromise on quality of apps.
Xamarin is a cross platform framework which provides 75% of the shared code and thereby reducing around 60% of the development time.
The survey says that 28% of the Fortune 500 companies prefer Xamarin app development. And this is a huge number.
Mobile applications are here to stay and their demands shall increase constantly without any doubt, so the enterprises need to get equipped to be able to suffice to the needs of application delivery at times of heavy demand. Hence comes forth Xamarin the best cross-platform development solution.
Before we delve deep into Xamarin app development we first need to clear our concepts related to cross-platform applications. Majority of the people who come across this term consider cross-platform apps as applications which run on several platforms however this term has been modified recently over the past few years though on some similar lines. It now basically talks about a platform that can facilitate the development of a single code which can be used on multiple devices.
Xamarin development allows you to use your team’s existing skills and to build native apps for multiple platforms and on a shared C# code base. Using the same IDE, language and APIs everywhere Xamarin apps are built with native user Interface. The Xamarin apps can access the entire band of functionality that is exposed by the underlying platform and device. It includes special capabilities like iBeacons and Android. Xamarin’s integration with native SDKs of each platform allows the application to take advantage of the platform-specific functionality, thereby making sense to design the apps to use those features.
Let’s See Why Xamarin?
1. Xamarin is well equipped with Visual Studio
Xamarin along with Visual Studio makes quite a powerful and impressively modern IDE. It includes myriad features, a few of them being project template library, code auto-completion, etc. It gives .NET/C# framework to generate high performance real -native binary code output thereby resulting in native applications in its truest sense. With proper knowledge of C# and of course Xamarin’s code reuse feature, it makes it possible to develop a highly functional cross-platform native mobile application within just a few weeks.
2. Job done faster with shared code logic
Xamarin allows for various components such as the business objects, data access layers, app logic, etc to be shared across multiple platforms. It implies that the core logic is written once and deployed across multiple platforms. As much as 90% of the code is shared across the three major mobile platforms leaving the rest part to be specifically platform based. Hence it also ensures faster go-to-market product. If an iOS application has already been developed then for the Android version the coders need not write from scratch thereby saving a lot of time and effort.
3. Secure backend using AMSc
Xamarin and Microsoft have a global partnership, .NET portable class libraries are made available with deep integration with Visual Studio. It also gives support to Microsoft Azure Mobile Services on both Android and iOS and this feature a secure and scalable backend is created for multiple mobile platforms.
4. Lowers learning curve
It is very inconvenient and at the same time highly inefficient as well as a very costly affair to learn, develop and maintain a different set of codes across different platforms for the same application. Xamarin needs only C# language skills, hence developers can focus on learning a single skill and save the time spent on learning separate programming skills as it works for multiple platforms. This lowers the learning curve for the codes and accelerates the process of mobile app development.
5. Xamarin supports SDK integrations
Xamarin works with the latest SDKs and makes use of some of the common and platform specific APIs. It bids the APIs and SDKs of multiple platforms strongly to generate high-quality applications. The SDK integration feature of Xamarin aids in providing support for new features as soon as they are inserted in the operating system of the device.
On An Ending Note
I would like to say that enterprises are constantly facing issues to develop high-quality applications for iOS and Android phones and tablets. With a restricted budget, it becomes all the more difficult to develop apps catering to various platforms. Xamarin app development solves a huge problem and allows you to reuse the code while also retaining native app features. Tastes like ‘the’ asset, isn’t it?
References: weblineindia, saviantconsulting, keysys, hiddenbrains
Rachit Agarwal
