India will overtake the US as the second largest market for smartphones in the world by 2016. WOW! India will exceed 200 million (20 crores ) smartphone users by 2016. Again WOW!
Don’t you think it is the best opportunity for small/medium scale businesses in product development to enter into the area of digital business, especially who leads existing business and need to reach new heights? As we all know we are going through a revolution. To be more specific, Smartphone revolution! I am not exaggerating as it is very clear that most of the customers are using good spec phones. Hence, I would definitely say that this is the right time for all the SMBEs to start using mobile phone applications for their business development. If you hesitate now, that will be a bad decision you have ever made. Yes! Go Digital!
What Should I do?
The answer is Digital Business. Firstly, provide an option for the customers to get goods or services through their mobile phones. That will make a tremendous change in your business. What I feel is, in the present scenario it is easier for you to run a business in digital version than going for all the traditional tactics.
From my personal experience, my friend runs a furniture business in the main city of Kerala. Recently, he started a website to list all the products so that customer inquiries about furniture could be easily made. Surprisingly, this change could make double furniture sales within six months. Then, isn’t it the right time to change to digital mode? So think about a mobile application to customers for easy access. Anytime! Anywhere! In this case, a hybrid application will be the right choice.
What is Hybrid App?
Hybrid App is a mobile application in which the same app can be worked in different mobile operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows, etc…, and even in browsers (Mozilla, Chrome, IE, etc.. )! It is the same as mobile applications for users, which can be installed from App Store or Google Play store. But technically it’s different, its works with a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Usually, mobile applications are built using own tools. Once the application is built for iOS it cannot be installed with Android and vice versa. Here comes the difference of hybrid applications. These are hosted inside a native application that uses mobile platform’s Web View which provides access to capabilities like camera, contacts, accelerometer, etc. or it is a combination of both native applications and web applications. Thus, these applications can work on specific platforms as well as multiple platforms.
Why Should I work on Multiple Platforms?
We have 1.4 billion(140 crores) active Android devices worldwide and 1 billion (100 crores) Apple users and others using Windows. So it’s not easy to make applications for each operating system and maintain them separately at an early stage of the business. This is where hybrid applications work for you. It can be worked everywhere but can be maintained in one place.
What are the Advantages ?
Cost Effective?
Of course, it is! As we build a single application to use different devices, the app development cost will be very less since same code can work on all devices (iOS, Android, Windows). This again increases the speed of development and reduces the maintenance cost.
Apart from this, in future, if any changes are to be made to the application, then, you can bravely go for it as there is no need to make changes for all the devices which the application work for.
Resource Availability?
As I mentioned before, it works based on HTML and JavaScript. So a normal web developer can develop a hybrid app with an extra training.
Help product development?
Product development is one of the most uses of the hybrid application, because when we start a product we cannot spend a lot of money on to it. So we can build MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in hybrid and can also build native app after the success of product using user trends and behaviours.
Facebook was hybrid at an early stage, but later they cannot manage with a hybrid, and they have to move to native for each device. Trust me! The time has changed! Hybrid application tools are stronger now. Hence, a medium scale application can be easily managed with a hybrid.
What are the Disadvantages?
Obviously! Every technology has got its own pros and cons. Some disadvantages of our hybrid app are:
- You may or may not have access to native application features(Hardware Device Buttons not now but in future).
Do Hybrid Apps have a future?
Hybrid app development is one of the most growing areas of IT now. There are many frameworks that have access to more devices. So, in the coming future, it can work like a native app. Future is of hybrid everywhere!
Here are some tools described below and go following links for reading more about those.
- IONIC
- React Native
- Meteor JS
- Native Script
- PhoneGap
- jQuery Mobile
For more read -:
https://www.sitepoint.com/top-7-hybrid-mobile-app-frameworks/
http://tutorialzine.com/2015/10/comparing-the-top-frameworks-for-building-hybrid-mobile-apps/
Conclusion
To put it in a nutshell, Hybrid applications are the best option for medium scale business’ product development to enter the digital business model. Think and take the best decision. If you are looking high hardware dependent or billion user mobile applications, please excuse hybrid. You can see the zenith of your business. Wish you Good Luck!
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One reply on “What is Hybrid App and How it can Help Small Scale Business”
Nice post