Mobile application development
Mobile application development is the set of processes and procedures involved in writing software for small, wireless computing devices, such as smartphones and other hand-held devices. Like web application development, mobile application development has its roots in more traditional software development. One critical difference, however, is that mobile apps are often written specifically to take advantage of the unique features of a particular mobile device.
Types of mobile applications
In the early years of mobile apps, the only way to ensure an app could perform optimally on any device was to develop the app natively. This meant that new code had to be written specifically for each device’s specific processor. Today, the majority of mobile applications developed are device-agnostic.
- Native applications. These applications are built using integrated development environments (IDEs) and languages for mobile OSes such as Apple iOS or Google Android.
- Progressive web apps. A PWA is a website that looks and behaves as if it is a mobile app. These applications are developed with web technologies such as Facebook React.
- Encapsulated apps. An encapsulated app runs within a container app. Products such as the Microsoft Power App drag-and-drop app creation tool enable less experienced developers to build a mobile application rapidly.s.
- Frameworks and libraries. You can use this reusable code written by someone else to accelerate your development of a mobile app.