Hybrid Applications

Mobile usage has sky-rocketed in the past few years and the year over year double digit growth provides a clear glimpse at how mobile applications have become a powerful tool for many companies. In the early days of smart phones, there was a massive build up of games and various utilities that created the connections that we now have today. In the past few years, many companies have leveraged mobile applications to help in a variety of areas in their business.

Hybrid mobile application development came along as an alternative to native mobile development. Hybrid is a web-based approach that “skins” a web-based mobile applications with iOS and Android phones. This approach has helped many businesses launch mobile applications leveraging a hybrid approach. The hybrid mobile applications are built once and quickly configured to work with both iOS and Android. This saves time, money and ongoing support of the mobile application.

The critical difference with a hybrid approach is that you have the power and flexibility of web-based development, but the power of the mobile platforms and the tools, utilities and marketplaces.

Hybrid apps come with all the advantages of an web-based application, but are developed with the addition of a native wrapper that allows the hybrid mobile application to access a mobile devices native features through the use of the devise SDK’s (software development kits) such as GPS, the phone’s camera and more.

Our teams have focused on hybrid mobile application development as a build once and deploy on a much broader network. The hybrid approach has its place in the market, much like native development for iOS and Android. Evaluating your project is the first step in understand if this development approach is right for your business and specific application.

NFY Interactive, Inc. has been working with iOS and Android for a number of years, leveraging both native application development, including: Swift and Java. However, through powerful new hybrid platforms, our team of expert web developers have been able to help accelerate the development process – coupled with high-level front-end developers, our team can help build, test, deploy and manage your hybrid mobile application.

We understand that the concept of hybrid can create some discussions that could impact the direction that you ultimately go for your mobile application. It is important to understand that hybrid mobile applications are more common place than most know- you don’t have to look far to see that market disruptors are all around leveraging the hybrid approach.  Take a look at https://m.uber.com/, yes – Uber is a hybrid mobile application.

As we have covered, hybrid mobile applications are web-based applications that rest inside of a specific container for use on a smart phone and accessible through the app stores.

The development approach for hybrid begins to provide additional opportunities that help expand the presence and access to your application. Through HTML5, our developers can quickly convert a website into a mobile application, linked through a simple shortcut. This model is a very low-level mobile application, but still provides access to the mobility and power of smartphones. This has been leveraged for small businesses that offer a service that offers convenience on a mobile (online pizza delivery) as well as companies that had a mobile specific need, but did not require anything beyond the application.

The flexibility of hybrid application development is the primary advantage when considering mobile application development. Working with our team will put a team of experienced mobile application developers in your court. Our approach and process with help ensure that you are leveraging the best model for your company, application and future goals.

If you are looking for additional hybrid mobile development resources, we recommend:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_in_mobile_devices
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionic_(mobile_app_framework)
• http://developer.telerik.com/featured/what-is-a-hybrid-mobile-app/
• http://ionicframework.com
• Mobile Application Developers