What is Mobile App Development? | How Are Mobile Apps Developed?

Mobile phones have become as essential to people as a purse or wallet. They now drive our retail purchases, guide our travel and capture images of important memories. This essential consumer tool is now driving business activity as well.

According to Gartner, 70% of all access to business systems will be done via mobile devices.
As more employees use smartphones and tablets, companies must build mobile apps that access corporate systems, enable business tasks, deliver information or collect data. As a result, mobile app development is now a corporate priority.

While some companies use web apps to deliver information to mobile devices, web applications are not the same as mobile apps. They deliver information through a web browser, but cannot take advantage of the full mobile phone or tablet hardware capabilities.

People tend to love their iPhones and Android phones, and have loyalty to their platform of choice. With more companies allowing a BYOB policy, developers must be sure to develop apps that serve each operating system, and all size devices. Unless companies are supplying the devices to users, it's not possible to choose one mobile operating system over the other. That said, Android development tends to be the most costly, according to data.

Read Why Android Development Typically Costs 30% More

Cross-platform mobile apps can run on any iOS or Android device like a native mobile app. Cross-platform app development uses a single code base (usually using low-code software) to build apps. As a result, the time to create apps that run on multiple mobile platforms is dramatically reduced.

Less development time speeds time to market while saving companies significant development costs. Some low code vendors build cross-platform apps at least 10 times faster than traditional methods.

In addition, less experience is required to use low-code software to build these apps. As a result, companies won't need to hire mobile developers or outsource mobile app development to build apps. The apps can be built by current company employees.

Utility estimates that the costs for building apps can range from $80K – $250K+:

Simple apps can cost up to $80,000.
A basic database app can cost between $100,000 – $150,000.
Advanced apps with many features cost between $150,000 – $250,000.
Game apps can cost anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000+, based on quality and detail.

These numbers make sense for large enterprises with multi-million dollar IT budgets that can afford developers and software development kits. But how are SMBs supposed to afford to build these high costs? New app development technologies and development approaches have dramatically brought down the cost of apps.

Companies are lowering development costs down by using low-code app development software to produce cross-platform mobile apps.

Native app development takes significant time to build an app, because it requires coding. Free open source products are also available, but you will likely need a developer to write code. Low code app development, from vendors such as Mendix, Outsystems, Appypie and others, does routine coding for developers, significantly reducing the time required to build apps. Alpha Software even offers a low-code mobile app development platform you can use for free.

Another way companies are lowering development costs is by enabling less specialized developers to build apps.

To develop mobile apps, you once needed experience in programming languages to build apps for iOS or Android. In recent years, low-code software has emerged that allow developers without mobile experience to craft enterprise mobile apps. No-code software tools, which typically employ drag-and-drop interfaces, allow business workers to build basic apps to collect data and do simple business tasks.

Many companies realize they don't have enough developers to build all the mobile apps they need. As a result, they're finding methods and tools that allow business users to become more involved in the development process.

One overlooked area of mobile app development happens after you build the apps: deployment. Mobile Apps can be self-hosted using an on-premise server or hosted by third-party ISPs and cloud services.

To make your app available on the Apple Store or Google Play Store, steps typically include:

Sign up for the store as a developer.
Prepare your mobile app, mobile app description and mobile app screenshots for submission.
Create an app store listing
Submit your mobile app listing, including description and screenshots.
Upload and submit your app for review by store editors.