Many organizations taking their first steps to implement a mobile strategy are facing an important decision that will influence the results of this initiative. The process of choosing a development approach for a mobile application, namely native, web or hybrid, entails many parameters such as budget, project timeframe, target audience and application functionality to name a few. Each approach carries inherent benefits and limitations, and finding the one that best addresses the organization’s needs could be a challenging task.
The purpose of this whitepaper is not to identify the best development approach, as such does not exist, but rather to list the pros and cons each carries and describe the different scenarios, or enterprise requirements, that best fit one or the other.
Introducing the Approaches
Native Applications
Native applications have binary executable files that are downloaded directly to the device and stored locally. The installation process can be initiated by the user, or in some cases, by the IT department of the organization. The most popular way to download a native app is by visiting an application store such as Apple’s App Store, Android’s Marketplace, or BlackBerry’s App World, but other methods exist and are sometimes provided by the mobile vendor.
Once the app has been installed on the device, the user launches it like any other service the device offers. Upon initialization, the native app interfaces directly with the mobile operating system, without any intermediary or container. The native app is free to access all of the APIs that are made available by the OS vendor and, in many cases, has a unique look and feel that is typical of that specific mobile OS.
To create a native app, developers must write the source code (in human-readable form) and create additional resources such images, audio segments and various OS-specific declaration files. Using tools provided by the OS vendor, the source code is compiled (and sometimes also linked) in order to create
an executable in binary form that can be packaged along with the rest of the resources and made ready for distribution.
These tools, as well as other utilities and files, are normally called the SDK of the mobile OS. Although the development process is often similar across different operating systems, the SDK is platform-specific and each mobile OS comes with its own unique tools. The following table presents the different tools, languages, formats and distribution channels associated with the leading mobile operating systems.
These differences across platforms result in one of the most critical disadvantages of the native development approach – code written for one mobile platform cannot be used on another, making the development and maintenance of native apps for multiple OSs a very long and expensive undertaking.
So why is it that in spite of this costly disadvantage, many companies choose to develop natively? To answer that question we will need to better understand the role of the APIs.
