Over the years, cross-platform app development has played a vital role in building mobile applications, and it is now one of the most popular tools for app development. The expanding growth of the mobile development market transformed cross-platform into a necessity across mobile technology companies in recent years.

The interest in cross-platform app development has steadily increased since 2010. With the expansion of its reach, many mobile app development companies became interested in experimenting with this type of technology. In fact, in 2022, the total revenue in the app market was estimated at around 437 billion dollars. Its growing popularity has resulted in a sea of cross-platform tools emerging on the market, and when it comes to choosing the best one, it can become quite difficult. To help you, this article has compiled the top cross-platform app development for you.

A guide to cross-platform app development

In the technological world, cross-platform is a system designed to work on multiple types of platforms or operating systems, such as iOS, Android, and Windows. Also known as multiplatform or platform independent, cross-platform allows developers to create apps that run similarly on different mobile platforms. In this sense, mobile engineers use cross-platform mobile development frameworks to build applications for multiple platforms using a single codebase. This type of framework can help developers write their application code only once and then implement them to run effectively across various platforms.

Numerous advantages can be pointed out by adopting this technology. Above all, this app development method saves time and increases productivity for app development companies. Having one single codebase means that mobile engineers can save time by avoiding the need to write code for each operating system, accelerating the development process, and as a result, developers will be able to launch their applications faster. This is one of the main reasons why it is one of the most popular methods in the app development domain. These cross-platform frameworks can also all help developers achieve significant cost savings.

The best cross-platform development in the market

Flutter

Developed by Google in 2017, Flutter is a popular cross-platform framework for building mobile, web, and desktop apps, such as iOS, Android, Linux, macOS, Fuchsia, and Windows. It is a free and open-sourced framework based on a programming language called Dary and it allows developers to build cross-platform mobile apps from a single codebase. The fast development is effectively one of the reasons why this platform has gained popularity. Albeit being one of the most recent cross-platform tools, Flutter has gained massive ground in the app development market and is widely used by many developers, and in mobile apps such as eBay, Alibaba, and Google Pay.

Ionic

Ionic has been in the application development space for a long time, specifically since 2013. It is a popular cross-platform framework that helps developers build hybrid mobile and desktop applications using a combination of programming languages, like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, some of the most used development languages. It is an open-source and 100% free framework, and it is used by a large developer community due to its speed and simplicity to learn and write. It is possible to find this cross-platform framework in several mobile apps such as EA Games.

React Native

An open-source UI software framework, React Native was developed in 2015 by Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook. It allows developers to build natively rendered cross-platform mobile apps such as Skype and Shopify, and in various small modules in Facebook and Instagram. It is a beginner-friendly framework that has conquered a sizable community and that is particularly popular among firms dedicated to developing exceptional app solutions. By using React Native, software developers can perform complex operations like video processing and image editing.

Xamarin

Launched in 2011 and now owned by Microsoft, Xamarin is an open-source cross-platform app development tool for building modern responsive iOS, Android, and Windows applications. It is used in mobile apps such as UPS and Alaska Airlines and is supported by many contributors across the globe, especially popular among C, C++, and C# developers who create mobile applications. One of its main features is the acceleration of the process and the lower cost of mobile app development.

Node.js

Node.js is another popular cross-platform framework for developing cross-platform apps. It is a tool built on the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine with the capacity to execute codes outside the web browser. It is an open-source environment, best suited for server-side development and scalable networking applications. The tool helps simplify the development of web applications and has a library capable of executing codes at high speed.

If you are interested in app development and need a hand, talk to us! At PrimeIT Consulting you can rely on a team of highly skilled developers to support you to jump-start your business.