Answering the Native vs. Web vs. Hybrid Mobile Debate

Michael Rockford
Jul 20, 2017 · 5 min read

Before we get into the native app vs web app vs hybrid debate, let’s just start by saying that if your enterprise is not utilizing a mobile application in at least some areas of the business, you are already behind. According to a survey conducted by Gartner, nearly 75% of enterprises globally have built, customized, or virtualized a mobile application in the previous twelve months.

“In my opinion, the future of mobile is the future of everything.” ~ Matt Galligan

Building an application that supports the needs of your enterprise means understanding your development options. Should you go native? Web? Or both? What about mobile experiences of your existing enterprise tools?

If you are a Salesforce customer, you already have access to a mobile experience through Salesforce1. Salesforce1 is perfect for internal business users and is easily customizable. When you are ready to deploy, Salesforce provides a wealth of resources to walk Administrators through the process of rolling out Salesforce1 to your organization.

Understanding your options for mobile development is critical to making the right choice for your organization. Mobile development of a custom application comes down to three choices: Native, Web, or Hybrid. Each brings distinct advantages; finding the best fit means weighing your organization’s needs against the capabilities of each of your mobile development opportunities.

“For interaction-heavy projects, native apps are the way to go. That said, my advice is not to develop a native app unless you have a very specific reason for doing so.” ~ Lubo Smid

Native Mobile App Development

Building a mobile application means creating an individual application in the language native to the device. Native apps offer the best performance and the ability to access the full suite of device features and platform functionality.

All of this performance requires the use of expert developers in the selected language and device framework. If you are developing for Apple, this means maintaining a developer that codes in Swift, the compiled programming language developed by Apple for iOS and many of its other platforms or in Objective C; deploying to Android requires a Java developer.

In most cases, your application is not an island. It is connected with your brand and is carried through both internal and external users on many platforms. Building unique applications for each platform, each in a different language, complicates maintaining consistent functions, features, and brand image.

According to Gartner’s research director, Adrian Leow, “Many IT teams will have significant backlogs of application work that need completing, which increases the risk of lines of business going around IT to get what they want sooner.” Part of that backlog is managing native application updates. When deploying native applications, each update must be handled individually as individual operating systems are updated. As a result, maintenance costs are generally occurring at least twice a year.

Native applications are best deployed when there is a need to access all low-level functions of the device, when the application is exceptionally memory consuming or will process large computations (requiring optimal performance), or where application deployment is focused on a single device.

It is not the ideal choice if the application will be deployed to a wide audience of users on a variety of devices. Android alone has several versions that are device/manufacturer dependent. According to Android’s developer site, the distribution of users on Android does not fall solidly into one version, which means supporting a large Android user base requires supporting several versions of Android.

Image Source: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html, accessed July 14, 2017

Mobile Web App Development

Applications developed using HTML are websites optimized for mobile viewing. A Gartner survey revealed that enterprises are focusing development efforts on this type of mobile solution. On average, enterprises reported that “6.2 are planned for [development in] the next 12 months. According to Leow, “this indicates that some enterprises may be frustrated with developing [native] mobile apps and are instead refocusing on responsive websites to address their mobile needs.”

The functionality of mobile web applications is improving as browsers are becoming more robust and they now have the ability to access some device features such as the camera and fingerprint scanner.

Mobile web applications also come with the distinct advantage of building once and deploying everywhere, without the need to utilize containers or APIs. Also, since they are built entirely in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS enterprises can utilize existing resources making the applications less expensive to build and maintain.

Mobile web applications do have some constraints. First, they require an internet connection to work and only a limited amount of data can be stored locally. There is some limited, lightweight offline caching, but most functions will require the user’s device to be connected. In addition, both latency and lag factor in so performance is not as robust as that of a native hybrid application.

“The mobile phone acts as a cursor to connect the digital and physical.”~ Marissa Meyer

Hybrid Mobile App Development

Trying to find the best of both worlds? Hybrid mobile development attempts to do just that by taking a little from each of the camps. By providing the benefits of native functionality combined with the streamlined maintenance and build of web development, hybrid application development provides a response to the “increasing amount of pressure on IT to develop a larger variety of mobile apps in shorter time frame,” as described by Leow.

At RadialSpark, we often use Cordova to develop hybrid applications. Cordova acts as a bridge between browser-based applications and the native device features, such as the camera, phone call, SMS, and fingerprint scanner. It also allows developers to build front ends in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Hybrid applications provide access to low level device functions while utilizing HTML and JavaScript so that businesses can rely on their existing development teams and avoid onboarding new platform-specific engineers. The use of a single language also brings with it the best part of mobile web application development, build once and deploy everywhere.

Additionally, as new OS updates are released, Cordova continually updates its containers, reducing the maintenance burden for in-house teams. While it is still necessary to run separate tests on each platform, the development work is significantly reduced when compared to building native applications for multiple platforms.

While hybrid applications are a great option in many use cases, those that are exceptionally memory consuming or will process large computations (requiring optimal performance) may present a challenge as the container requires processing power and memory to operate. In 90% of cases, a hybrid application has the processing power to keep up with user demands and is a great, cross-platform mobile development option.

Finding the best mobile development path for your enterprise application ensures that your IT team, your budget, and most importantly, your users have the best possible experience. If you are not sure which option to go with, seek the advice of an expert to help you make the call on the native app vs web app vs hybrid debate.

Michael Rockford, CEO and Founder of Radialspark, a registered Salesforce partner and leader in custom software development and implementations.

Originally published on www.radialspark.com

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Michael Rockford

Written by

CEO, Founder https://www.radialspark.com ~ a Salesforce partner and leader in custom software development and Salesforce implementations.

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