Why Flutter is the Future of Cross-Platform Mobile App Development
Between Google Ads, Alibaba, Reflectly, and Birch Finance, there are a few similarities.
They’re all built using Flutter. More than 100,000 apps have been sent to hundreds of million devices, according to the Flutter community.
What is Flutter’s rise to fame? Is it really the future of cross-platform mobile app development?
Let’s talk about the aspects of Flutter that make it so special, and how it can benefit your developers.
What is Flutter?
Flutter is an open-source software by Google for app development for different platforms, which, from a single codebase, allows for creating iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, web, and Google Fuchsia apps. The UI toolkit is written in C, C++, and Dart and helps you make wonderful, native applications.
What Makes Flutter Unique?
A key aspect of Flutter is that it provides cross-platform apps, in that it uses the same codebase to create apps for each operating system.
In addition, the UI is exactly the same on Android and iOS. As such, when you hire Flutter developers, they don’t have to wrestle with designing separate versions for each platform. The Flutter framework will ensure that everything on the screen looks uniform.
Besides this, Flutter has some additional benefits such as support from a third-party editor, fast loading times, and getting a product to market more quickly. We’ll go over these benefits later in the presentation.
Why Flutter is the Future of Cross-Platform Mobile App Development?
Flutter is predicted to become the de facto app development solution in the coming years because of the following qualities.
1. Easy setup with very detailed documentation
Since Flutter is a Google product, it’s a seamless integration for the company’s designers and their material design platform. Flutter app development becomes easier, even for novices. This framework comes with complete documentation to help people get started. The documentation is detailed and should provide answers to any questions developers may have during the development process.
2. The Lowest Code Requirements
Given what we’ve talked about, Flutter lets you use the same code to create apps that can run on any platform, reducing the amount of time and effort you’ll need to invest in app development. Additionally, it utilizes Dart, a language designed to make usage easy and seamless. Dart utilizes C-like syntax and can be compiled into JavaScript code using a Just-In-Time compiler.
3. Custom UI Widgets
Widgets are a crucial part of Flutter. These customizable, built-in UI components are fundamental to the app’s entire graphical interface. If you work with Flutter, you’ll have access to all the software tools you need for developing your mobile app.
Flutter also comes with its own rendering engine which you can use to draw widgets. Widgets, gestures, and animations can be done in Dart. The two key mobile app design widgets are Material design widgets (Android) and Cupertino (iOS).
4. Faster Development
With a single codebase, you are able to build a cross-platform app in a short amount of time. Besides, Flutter provides hot reloading, which allows you to change the sources and see the changes reflected in the running application without the need to recompile the source code or restart. This reduces the time it takes to complete the app development.
Flutter’s load requirement is small, so you can develop two different native mobile apps using the same framework. Thus, you don’t need to invest a lot of time and effort in testing.
If you’re an app developer, entrepreneur, or small business and want to rapidly create a mobile app, Flutter is an excellent framework for you.
5. Faster Time to Market
Given that the business landscape is hyper-competitive, the quicker you can get your product to the market, the better your chances of succeeding. In that regard, a quicker time-to-market can help you reach your target customers before your competitors, get feedback quickly, and upgrade your product as per the requirements.
Building an app with Flutter app development will be less time-consuming and expensive, which means you’ll be able to bring your app to market more quickly. As a result, you’ll be able to build an edge over your competitors, and you’ll have the potential to sell more of your app.
6. Less Development Cost
The cost of developing a mobile app cannot be overlooked. A common mobile app will cost around $30,000. This can run up to $100,000 if certain specifications are involved.
A startup and a smaller business don’t have such a significant budget as a large company does. Moreover, the cost of development doesn’t always stay just about the financial end. Consider potential costs like team building, servers, marketing, and more.
Flutter lowers the cost of development. The shared codebase means you won’t need to find an Android developer and a Flutter developer. To make it easy, you can hire Flutter developers [Remove Highlight] and create cross-platform apps. Testing is also minimal so even if you have a low budget, you can create a cross-platform app.
7. Performance Boost
Mobile app developers typically prefer Flutter over other frameworks because of its impressive performance. In order to understand this performance better, let’s compare Flutter with its close contender, React Native.
React Native depends on some key building blocks that involve running JavaScript in another thread. Therefore, a bridge is necessary to maintain communication between native modules. This process is both time-consuming and resource-intensive.
However, Flutter builds everything from scratch. It converts app logic and UI modules into machine code to make the app run faster and more efficiently. Flutter apps are typically faster than those built using React Native, as well as native apps built for specific platforms.
For these customers, convenience and efficiency take precedence over any other factors; as a result, Flutter will likely be the go-to option for app developers in the future.
8. Firebase Integration
One of the advantages of using Flutter is its connection to Firebase. It’s a BaaS platform by Google for developing web and mobile applications. As well as many other tools, developers can use Firebase to benefit from their services, like databases, analytics, crash reporting, and messaging. Firebase integrates very well with Flutter, which means developers using Flutter can also use these tools.
9. Ideal for MVP
The MVP is the cheapest product that covers the basic needs of customers. It is intended to save money for the more expensive stages of developing a final product.
More and more software development companies are adopting an Agile methodology. For those who want to get their product out to the market faster, and to those who need the money from their investors and shareholders sooner, the creation of a minimum viable product (MVP) is vital. Flutter is an excellent choice for an MVP because of the less time and effort needed to build a simple app.
How Does Flutter Benefit Developers?
In the last section, we discussed how Flutter is the way of the future for mobile app developers. But other than for monetary gain, Flutter is beneficial for the developer. There’s a reason for this.
- Largest Degree of Community Support:
Flutter has large community support with over 25k Github followers. Besides, Google is a big player in Flutter so, if you employ developers that use Flutter, then queries encountered by these developers are handled promptly. - Ideal for Advanced UI:
In the case that you want developers to work on an advanced UI, Flutter is an excellent choice. It uses Skia, an internal graphics engine that handles the rendering of all the UI. Developers find it much easier to create visually-appealing elements of a UI when using design frameworks. - Excellent Developer Experience:
If you want your business to create world-changing products, you need to provide your developers with an excellent experience. Flutter is how you do it. It features a cutting-edge IDE with seamless developer-facing error resolution. - Open-Source Packages:
Developing mobile apps rapidly can be challenging for your developers. Flutter, on the other hand, will make it a little bit easier. The Google Flutter SDK comes with plenty of free, open-source packages that make it easier for developers to quickly build new apps. Moreover, Flutter itself is an open-source project, so developers from all over the world can make their own additions to the library. - Integration with Existing Apps:
If you have an existing app written in a native language, and now you want to run it in Flutter, would you ask your developers to start from scratch? In Flutter, you don’t need to worry about any of that. Flutter has an onboarding process that’s quick and you don’t need to rewrite any code.
Wrapping Up
Experts believe that Flutter will be the dominant mobile app in the near future because it has significant business benefits. That’s why businesses can now rapidly bring their products to market, saving costs and making them more accessible on more devices at the same time.
To developers, Flutter is more useful and easier to use, allowing faster app development. A big part of Flutter’s appeal is the extensive and caring community that tends to correct any issues.
So, what’s your favourite reason for using Flutter?
Of course, if you’re trying to make cross-platform mobile apps with Flutter, I’m here to help :) just hire me as a flutter developer.
