Best Tech Stack for Mobile Development in 2020
Tags: Tech Stack, Software Development, Mobile Development, Mobile App Development, Outsourcing

According to Allied Market Research, the global mobile app market was estimated at $106.27 billion in 2018 and will reach $407.31 billion by 2026. Against the background of such activity on the market, creating a new application, you need to make an effort to make it competitive and interesting to users. The choice of technology for your project plays a major role in this process.

A technology stack is a collection of tools, programming languages, frameworks, APIs, etc. that are used to create a specific product. It’s never the same and it differs from application to application, there is no universal set. How do you choose the best tools for your project and what you need to know about modern mobile technology? Let’s figure it out together.

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Types of mobile app development

Before moving on to considering specific technology, you need to know what type your application will be. There is no one-size-fits-all stack perfect for any project. It all depends on the requirements and your vision of the final result. Mobile apps can be divided into 3 types: native, cross-platform, and hybrid. We have already covered the difference between these applications in detail in the article The Types of Mobile Applications: All You Should Know Before Developing an App. Let us remind you briefly.

Native apps

According to statistics, this is the most common type of mobile applications. Native apps are developed for a specific platform: iOS or Android. The default browser, calendar, mail on your smartphone are all native apps, created taking into account the features of the operating system. Nexar is an example of such an app. By focusing on a specific platform, native applications are fast and efficient, they can work without an Internet connection, and are intuitive for the user. However, if you want to create an app that runs on both iOS and Android, you will have to develop two separate apps, which increases the development cost.

Cross-platform apps

The main advantage of this type of application is in the name. Cross-platform apps run simultaneously on multiple operating systems, which means developers can use the same code base that connects to native components via the so-called bridges. Cross-platform is achieved by compiling source code for execution on each platform. Each separate compilation will result in a separate executable file. This type of mobile development is cheaper than the native one. Yes, it sounds great, but as with each option, there are some drawbacks here. Cross-platform apps are less flexible, they are harder to maintain, and they have a lower user experience because this kind of app doesn’t take into account the uniqueness of each platform.

Hybrid apps

Hybrid mobile app development combines the best practices of cross-platform and native approaches. Hybrid apps can also run on multiple platforms, but they’re essentially web apps built using standard web tools and packed up in native containers. This structure allows these apps to run on iOS, Android, and web, but as expected, they have lower responsiveness and performance. You can also distribute hybrid apps using app stores.

The choice of the type of mobile application depends on the characteristics of each specific project. For some apps, cross-platform comes first, for another, performance is key. We can briefly compare the strengths and weaknesses of all three types in the table below.