According to a Statista survey released in February 2022, the number of smartphone users worldwide is around 6.6 billion and is expected to grow to more than 7 billion by 2027 [1]. Having multiple platform availability of your application is crucial to tapping a wider market and having a competitive edge in mobile app development.
App development cost is the biggest concern for startups and entrepreneurs. Hence, the most asked question by a developer is ‘How much time and money would the development take?’ Another question iOS developers ask is ‘Should I use a native iOS app builder?’.
App development is no small task. Depending on the complexity of the app, development can take around 3-9 months. The expertise and time involved in the development set the costs of a project. According to ‘Business of Apps’ research, the following are 2022 app development cost benchmarks [2]:
- Simple app development price: $16,000 – $32,000
- Medium complexity app development price: $32,000 – $48,000
- Complex app development price: $72,000+
Many factors determine the cost of application development, such as complexity, features & functionality, size of the development company, operating system (Android or iOS), native & multi-platform development and ongoing maintenance.
To save money, go for a multi-platform development tool instead of a native iOS app builder. This article explores why cross-platform app development is easy on the pocket solution for native app development and how RAD Studio helps you achieve that.
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Cross-Platform App Development – to save money building native apps
Businesses generally require the multi-platform functionality of their apps. Thus, the development of mobile (iOS & Android) and desktop (Windows & macOS) versions of the same app is needed. Native development handles this scenario by developing an app for each of the various operating systems separately, which leads to the obvious reason why cross-platform development comes in handy.
In cross-platform development, a developer or team of developers only builds a single code base with a universal language that is compatible with other platforms. Doing this reduces the development time and is also less costly than the native development approach.
RAD Studio is one such multi-platform app development tool used to build high-performance native applications. It has Object Pascal & C++ support and enables Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and Linux development.
How does cross-platform app development save money?
Does your app builder allow you to create apps with a single codebase?
Cross-platform development uses one codebase for multiple platforms, which reduces coding effort and results in code reusability. The speed of the overall app development life cycle improves. The challenges of hiring separate teams for writing separate codes from scratch for different platforms and cross-team collaboration efforts are reduced.
How does your choice of cross-platform app platform make it more cost-effective?
High cost and development time are associated with native app development as it requires building more than one app for multiple platforms requiring platform-specific programming expertise.
Because of the single codebase, development times are low with cross-platform development, thus cutting down the development cost. It is also easier to find programming expertise as one medium-sized team can build the app adaptable to other platforms.
How is a single-codebase cross-platform app more developer friendly?
In the native approach, development occurs in platform-specific languages, i.e., objective C and Swift for iOS, while Java or Kotlin for Android, resulting in time-consuming delivery.
Cross-platform development uses languages compatible with multiple platforms like C++ and Native React. One codebase leads to fewer bugs with easy maintenance. Releasing new features and introducing updates is easy, quick, and cost-effective. Hence, complementing agile development methodologies with in-depth planning, running sprints for quick changes and efficient risk management with step-by-step app releases.
Does being faster to market mean you can reach a wider audience?
According to Statista, out of the 6.6 billion smartphone users in the world, the Android market share of mobile operating systems stood closer to 70%, while the iOS operating system’s market share was around 25 % between 2012 – 2022 [3].
One app developed for a specific platform like iOS results in limited customer reach, thus capping your revenue opportunities. Also, when the requirement of tapping another platform’s customer base would arise, the development would have to be done starting from scratch.
With cross-platform development, companies can reach a large market base due to multiple platform products and services availability. Top examples of cross-platform mobile apps are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, VLC, and Adobe Reader, which have become a part of today’s lifestyle.
Why is “brand uniformity” a hidden money saver?
Users prefer a seamless experience of an application on all platforms. Developing native iOS and Android apps with brand consistency is quite a stretch and time-consuming. Cross-platform app development delivers a unified look and feel of the app across multiple platforms. It is easier to develop multiple apps with a single codebase having similar UI / UX functionalities.
How does RAD Studio save you money on cross-platform app development?
RAD Studio is the fastest way to develop high-performance multi-platform native apps with flexible cloud services and broad IoT connectivity offered by Embarcadero. RAD Studio 11.1 release offers the following cross-platform development features:
- RAD Studio 11 offers platform targeting with support for new operating system releases like Windows 11, macOS 12 Monterey, iOS 15, and Android 12.
- Robust user experience and full-featured IDE with customizable layout and content.
- Improved code insights with powerful compilers and debuggers deliver increasingly better quality.
- It is rich with RTL, UI, and database libraries.
- Smarter code navigation, auto code completion, include-files awareness, class helper support, and array suggestions allow faster coding, thus boosting productivity.
- Remote work and team collaboration become more effective with the remote desktop access of improved RAD Studio IDE.
In addition to the above, you get to enjoy milestone innovations from previous releases of RAD Studio, such as full support for the latest 4k+ high-resolution screens, VCL Styles with design-time support, and compilation for both existing Intel and new M-series macOS processors (Apple Silicon) & Android API 30.
References:
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/
[2] https://www.businessofapps.com/app-developers/research/app-development-cost/
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-market-share-held-by-mobile-operating-systems-since-2009/