The discussion on selecting the most appropriate App for mobile devices is an everlasting one. This discussion is important from the developer’s perspective as it would help him in deciding the kind of App that can be created and the kind of users it will cater to. Let us try to explain the different Apps available.

WEB APPS:

An App which is normally coded using a browser-rendered language such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.

Here are some of the advantages of these Apps:

• It can be developed quickly and thereby reducing the development costs
• There is no need to send updates through the App stores as it can be sent directly
• No need to share your revenue with App stores
• These can be used across different mobile platforms(code reusability)

Here are some of the limitations of these Apps:

• There are browser compatibility issues. Not every feature is compatible with every other browser
• It is difficult to create rich user interfaces for these Apps
• Most of the Apps can be accessed by manually typing the URL in the browser
• It requires internet connectivity. It Cannot be downloaded and used offline
• Background Memory Management is difficult
• It has performance issues as the code is being executed in the browser
• It will not be able to use the device capabilities unlike the native Apps
• There are not many App stores available for web Apps
• There is no successful revenue model that is already available in the market

NATIVE APPS:

It is an App that is coded using a specific programming language such as objective-C for iOS, Java for Android, and C #for Windows Phone and so on. It can access the various features of the mobile device such as Camera and Contact List.

Here are some of the advantages of these Apps:

• It provides rich user experience
• It can be downloaded and accessed offline
• It can be launched in an App store which gives visibility to the App
• It provides better performance as it interacts with the mobile device’s operating system
• It has a successful monetization model

The various limitations of these Apps are:

• It needs to be written separately for each platform
• The revenue generated has to be shared with the App stores
• Updates have to downloaded through the App stores

Therefore our take is that a web App would be ideal for a larger audience with simple user interfaces. A native App is ideal for a smaller audience and to provide good user interfaces.

Apps that require high performance are normally developed as native Apps and web Apps are finding increased usage among the enterprise platforms.

Currently Native Apps are more popular among the users. Web Apps are reducing the gap on all the parameters constantly and forcing the debate to continue into the future.

You can also check out the different APIs available with us for developing your Native App or Web App.

It would be great to hear the views from the readers of this blog. In case you have any more questions, please feel free to reach out to us at support@shephertz.com.