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Developing a new app for your business is definitely a great move to take a company to new heights of success. However, among the plethora of mobile app development platforms to choose from, the task becomes a bit tedious.

Cross-platform mobile development is highly regarded owing to the numerous benefits it brings along as compared to native app development. In this blog post, we will compare the top three Cross-platform mobile development platforms Flutter Vs React Native Vs Xamarin to help you make a better decision when going for app development.

The Current State of Mobile App Development

The total number of mobile apps in the market is increasing day by day. The figures and statistics are indicative of the same.

As OF Q4 2019, THERE ARE 1.8 million apps are available on the Apple App Store while a whopping 2.5 million are available on Google Play Store. (Statista)

Moreover, the total number of mobile apps developed for Apple App Store over the past 10 years and the total apps projected for the coming years can be seen in the figure below:

It can be noticed that while the total number of active apps in 2015 was 1.7 million, the figures more than doubled in 2019 at 4.6 million.

XpertLab – Website Development Company Junagadh

The Good & Bad of Cross-Platform Mobile App Development

Cross-platform mobile development brings along a host of benefits that are otherwise missing in the native development methodology.

On the other hand, there are some shortcomings too that make cross-platform mobile development slightly less effective as compared to native development. Let’s take a look at both of these –

Flutter Vs Xamarin VS React Native – Core Differences

Flutter, React Native and Xamarin rank among the top three cross-platform mobile app development frameworks. Let’s analyze the pros and cons of each of these relative to one another.

Flutter

A highly popular open-source framework for cross-platform mobile app development, the Flutter framework is highly popular among front-end developers.

The framework allows code re-usability from 50-90% besides providing amazing user interfaces. It utilizes Dart for high-quality application development.

“Google AdWords, Google Greentea, Alibaba, and Topline are some popular apps built using Flutter”.

Pros:

1. Complete Development Ecosystem: Due to the availability of pre-built widgets, CLI tools, and APIs.
2. Easy Customization Options: This allows creating new widgets or customizing the existing ones.
3. Cost-efficient: Open source hence free.
4. Hot Reload: Allows quicker bug fixes, easily build UIs, and add features.

Cons:

1. Large app size: This prompts developers to reduce the number of libraries and compress images to make necessary adjustments
2. An average Flutter app is 4.7 MB in size which is quite large compared to an Android native app starting typically from 1 MB.
3. Native API: As many native APIs are not provided, third-party packages may be required.

Ten Amazing App built with Flutter Technology

• Google ads
• Alibaba (e-commerce)
• Birch Finance (Finance)
• Reflect (lifestyle)
• Hamilton Musical (Entertainment)
• Coach Yourself (Healthcare)
• Watermaniac (Healthcare & Fitness)
• Hookie ( Social)
• Cryptograph (Finance)
• SG Bus Tracker (Maps & Navigation)

React Native

Built by Facebook in 2015, React Native is another popular cross-platform mobile app development framework.

The framework makes efficient use of the popular high-level programming language JavaScript besides allowing developers to write few components using Swift, Objective-C or Java as & when required.

The use of native UI controllers ensures an amazing GUI and hence an app experience close to native apps with React Native. It even allows 90% of code re-usability overall.

Pros:

1. High-quality user interface: Due to native UI implementation, apps look like native apps
2. Faster development time: Due to the availability of ready-to-use UI components
3. Native Functionality Access: Camera, accelerometer, etc., available
4. Cost-efficient: Open source hence free

Cons:

1. Not-so-seamless navigation
2. Complex animations and transitions hard to achieve
3. Comparatively slower running apps

Ten amazing apps developed by React Native Technology

• Facebook ads Manager(Social)
• Bloomberg (Media & Entertainment)
• Airbnb
• Instagram(Social)
• Gyroscope (Fitness tracker)
• Myntra (e-commerce)
• Ubereats(e-commerce)
• Discord (entertainment)
• Discovery VR (entertainment)
• Towns (Social)

As we can see React Native technology is most often used in social and media & entertainment apps. Due to its high-quality user interface, cost-efficiency, and native functionality access, React Native is speedily growing its goodwill in various industries. 

Xamarin

It is the oldest cross-platform mobile app development framework that brings along a host of pros and cons when it comes to mobile app development.

The framework allows code re-usability up to 96%. Getting started with Xamarin is easy as the framework enables building the UI in two ways by utilizing-

• Xamarin.Android Quick Start or Xamarin.iOS Quick Start
• Xamarin.Forms

While the first approach is comparatively slow, it guarantees a native look & feel.

Pros:

1. Native-like app performance
2. Complete cross-platform app development framework
3. Free for small-size teams

Cons:

1. Delay in updates: As new updates to the platform take some time to reflect in Xamarin tools, issues in the app
2. performance may arise
3. Quite a large app size compared to native apps
4. Developing complex applications is time-consuming

Top ten amazing app built Using Xamarian Technology

• Storyo ( Social )
• The World Bank ( Media)
• Olo (e-commerce)
• Just giving (Finance)
• FreshDirect (e-commerce)
• Skulls of the shogun (Entertainment)
• Insightly ( Finance)
• APX (Media)
• SuperGiant Games ( Entertainment)

Gaming, media, and entertainment, there is hardly any market that does not think Xamarin for mobile app development is not a wise decision.