- Different coding languages and a lack of resources have made cross-platform app development hard.
- Companies use different methods to make user-friendly iOS and Android apps as quickly as possible.
- Here are the top tools developers are using to reach iPhone and Android users efficiently.
Apple and Google dominate mobile computing, but their different iOS and Android platforms force developers to make the same app twice to reach both audiences.
This technical hurdle has plagued the industry for years, causing delays in app availability. Smaller companies often lack resources to hire one team for iOS and another for Android, so they must create their app for only one platform first.
That’s spurred the creation of software tools that try to bridge the development gap. Other services aim to make app development itself easier with no-code or low-code solutions.
“Developers would in general love to be able to say, ‘Okay, you and I write it once. And then I don’t need to choose between iOS and Android’ — it just runs on both at the same time,” said Jason Nieh, a computer science professor at Columbia University. “That’s been a holy grail in computing if you will for many, many years to try to do this, and there have been a variety of pieces of work to try to look at different ways to try to overcome that problem.”
Here are some of the best tools and methods to bridge iOS-to-Android app development:
Cross-platform native development
Kotlin, a popular cross-platform language from the company JetBrains, lets developers create an app that is compatible on iOS and Android platforms and only requires coding it once.
Major companies are also trying to remedy the issue, such as Facebook with its software framework React Native and Google with the software development kit Flutter.
Flutter lets developers build iOS and Android apps from one set of code. Product lead Tim Sneath called the tool a “big bold bet on a big bold problem.” He highlighted how companies would never have multiple payroll or sales systems, yet developers must build the same app twice.
“We want to be able to give people the tools that they need,” Sneath said. “We try and provide all the features to be able to build the best experience on both platforms without having to write from scratch on both.”
Dom Profico, CTO of Mobiquity, said he wants to embrace Flutter but highlighted how a lack of developers who code in its language, Dart, makes …….