““70% of all access to business systems will be done via mobile devices.” - Gartner
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.
Mobile app development is very different from traditional desktop application development. In addition to app security and integration, mobile apps must also consider:
A range of smartphone and tablet screen sizes, plus the complexity of iOS and Android systems, only adds complexity to mobile app development
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.
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.
Watch: How to Develop a Cross-Platform Mobile App in 1 Hour
Cross-platform mobile app development offers:
Read How Cross-Platform Mobile App Development Allows More People to Build Mobile Apps
Utility, a project management company, estimates mobile apps to cost between $80k - $250k. Fortunately, some vendors offer software for free.
In addition to actual hours spent on coding and development, some other factors that can affect the cost of development are:
Read: What Does It Cost to Develop a Mobile App and How to Estimate the Cost of Your App
Utility estimates that the costs for building apps can range from $80K – $250K+:
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.
Companies can lower the cost of mobile app development by using innovative software and allowing more employees to build mobile 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.
An example of how one low-code solution, Alpha Anywhere, takes the worry out of mobile app deployment.
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:
The app stores can take days to review your app and publish it to the stores. Also, updating your app and resubmitting it to the stores requires another review.Some app development software companies offer solutions for deploying your mobile applications. These solutions don't require you to go re-submit applications to the app stores for review to publish them.
Read Why More Companies are Taking App Deployment to the Cloud
Here are some examples of modern mobile apps for business that have excellent user experience. These apps can share information, collect data, capture images and GPS information, and do on-device calculations.
We're available to answer your questions about mobile app development.
Email sales@alphasoftware.com or Call 781-229-4500
The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.
Alpha Software Corporation, based in Massachusetts, produces award-winning software that speeds mobile and web app development and deployment for business and IT. The core technology includes two components. Alpha Anywhere®, a full-stack low-code app development platform for building and deploying web and mobile apps. In just hours, Alpha TransForm® turns complex paper forms into powerful mobile forms that speed data collection.
Alpha Software is an InfoWorld Technology of the Year award winner, and scores near-perfect reviews from customers on crowdsourced review sites.
Customers rate Alpha Software highly for its speed of development, flexibility, offline apps, rich feature set and ability to scale predictably. For more information, visit https://www.alphasoftware.com/