Top Mobile App Development Platforms for 2018

by Karl P. Mobile App Developer

A wide range of mobile application development platforms is available in the market. This article enlists the top ten that you can select per your requirements.

Mobile app development continues to gain traction due to the increasing popularity of mobility amongst enterprises and individuals alike. Today, you can start a full-scale business with little or no physical presence. There are numerous instances of custom-built apps being leveraged to run businesses - from attracting customers to sustaining growth. Developing an enterprise app in-house has been found to be more cost-efficient than outsourcing the development process to a third-party. Thankfully, options are abundant when it comes to mobile application development platforms (MADP). Below is a selection of the top 10 platforms to help you choose the best for your requirement.

Appcelerator

Appcelerator is a platform that lets you develop mobile apps very fast with only a single JavaScript codebase. In addition to the two leading mobile OS (Android and iOS), it also supports Blackberry and Windows Phone. It is an open-source offering and supports over 5,000 OS APIs and devices.

Codename One

Codename One offers to you a mobile app development platform that works across mobile OS. It is compatible with Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA, and other popular IDEs, while the supported coding language is only Java. The remarkable feature of this platform is that you do not need a Windows machine to develop a Windows app or a Mac machine to develop a Mac app.

HokuApps

HokuApps offers an end-to-end mobile app development platform on the low-code model. It helps you build native and custom apps up to 10 times faster. It is a low-code app builder that enables you to significantly improve cost-efficiency and time-to-market, which directly reflects on the ROI. With cloud capability and full lifecycle support, HokuApps MADP is known to meet enterprise expectations without fail.

Kony

Kony is a versatile mobile application development resource that lets you make cross-platform apps. It boasts automatic coding capability, seamless API connections, and app preview feature. It also offers pre-designed apps to make the job a tad easier for novice developers.

Monocross

Monocross is also a cross-platform and ideal for building interactive and user-friendly apps for smartphones and tablets. It leverages the Mono framework and.Net and C# to facilitate multi-platform app development.

NativeScript

NativeScript facilitates the creation of mobile apps with cross-platform compatibility. The open-source platform supports Angular, JavaScript, and TypeScript. It allows you to reuse packages from CocoaPods, Gradle, and NPM, allowing to build feature-rich applications or enhance your existing apps’ features.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is an open source MADP that allows you to build apps for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and even Blackberry. A product of Adobe, it can be used to translate code from JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5 with ease. It works best for developing mobile apps that do not depend on the platform’s native features to function smoothly.

RhoMobile

RhoMobile facilitates the development of enterprise, native, and multi-platform mobile apps. Offering Eclipse plug-in for free, it allows you to design, develop, test, and debug applications without an emulator or other hardware. You can also access offline data with the help of Rho Connects.

Sencha Touch

Sencha Touch is an app building platform that is great for building mobile web apps. Facilitating the cross-platform development, it allows you to create apps for all major mobile OS. It has a comprehensive backend data package supporting myriad data sources. Sencha Touch integrates seamlessly with Cordova/PhoneGap for native API packaging and access.

Xamarin

Xamarin provides you with the tools to develop native and multi-platform apps using only C# codebase, eliminating dependence on Java, Swift, or Objective-C. You can use the same APIs, IDE, and language everywhere. Xamarin has been adopted by big names like Microsoft, Foursquare, Dow Jones, and IBM.

That’s as far as the Top Ten of mobile development platforms are concerned. All you need to do is identify and specify your requirements exhaustively, and evaluate the options to make the best choice.