Developing cross platform mobile apps allows you to provide your app to the highest number of users and not alienate any section of your user base or target audience. Mobile device shares by operating system as of 2021 broke down roughly as:
Android: 72%
iOS: 27%
KaiOS: less than 1%
Other: less than 1%
As you can see, by developing a mobile app that works on both Android and iOS, you can essentially cover all mobile device users. If your app doesn't work on iOS, you're leaving out a quarter or more of potential users, depending on the preferences of your target audience. And ignoring Android leads to an even larger missed opportunity for most companies.
You could obviously develop an iOS app and then develop an Android app — or vice versa. It's also an option to develop both apps separately but in tandem. But all of these choices mean more work, expense and time. Turning to cross platform app development processes instead of individual app dev options may help save you time and money, getting apps to market faster and within a more feasible budget for your organization.
However, cross platform app development has a few challenges. It requires more complicated code because you're combining components native to each platform as well as non-native components that can be made to work on each. These types of apps also don't support all native-only features, including certain 3D effects or animations, limiting some design and customer experience elements to what works across all platforms involved. Update challenges can also occur because a cross platform app has to be separately updated when Apple or Google makes updates to platforms — native iOS and Android apps tend to be updated automatically.
Because of these potential obstacles, it may be better to develop some apps separately via native app dev services. Whether or not cross platform app development is right for your project is something you'll need to consider with your dev team, but this process typically works best for projects that don't require extremely advanced design elements, have large data processing needs or require access to platform-specific features.