There is no doubt that this is the time of mobility and that’s why there is a huge demand for mobile phones and mobile apps installed on them in the market. Lately even mobile apps have evolved from being a simple app to an important and much advanced business utility. So many entrepreneurs have understood the benefits of mobile apps hence they have developed mobile apps as a minimum viable product (MVP) for their businesses. Right now there are mainly two platforms of smartphone brands which are popular and have most of the market share.

These are Android with around 85% market share and iOS with about 13% market share. In the initial days of mobile app development, it was mostly preferred to develop native mobile applications. But, with the growth of mobile device users, the use of mobile applications and the fragmentation of mobile devices, businesses have realized the immense benefits of multiplatform app development.

Research reports say that mobile apps are expected to generate around $ 189 Billion of revenues via app stores and in-app advertising by 2020. As per Statista report, right now there are about 2.1 million mobile apps available in the Google Play Store and around 2 million mobile apps in the Apple App Store.

As we said, most businesses now go for Hybrid App Development and therefore hybrid mobile applications are becoming the center of attraction as they can run on any platform. In this article, we have discussed the major benefits of using hybrid mobile app development for your company. Let’s first understand what is a Hybrid mobile app.

What is a Hybrid Mobile App?

A hybrid mobile app is a mobile application in which the same app can work and run in different and many mobile operating systems like Android, iOS, Windows and more and in all the web browsers like Chrome, Mozilla, IE, Opera etc. It remains the same mobile application with same code for users, whether they install it from the Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store. Technically, it is bit different and it works with a combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript and it is not written in usual native programming languages like Java, Objective-C or Swift.

Normally, mobile apps are built by using platform specific App Development process using own tools but once the application is built for Android, it can’t be installed on iOS and vice versa. Then comes the hybrid applications. These apps are hosted inside a native application which uses mobile platform’s web view which provides access to hardware and software capabilities like contacts, accelerometer, camera etc. or it is a combination of both native applications and web applications. Therefore, these mobile apps can work on specific platforms as well as on multiple platforms.
Right now there are about 1.4 billion active Android devices worldwide and about 1 billion Apple users and few people on Window as well. Hence it is not easy to make applications for each OS and maintain and update them separately if the business is in the initial stage. This is where hybrid apps come handy and work for you as they can work everywhere while needed to be maintained at only one place.

Let’s now discuss about the Benefits of Hybrid Mobile Apps for Small Businesses.

Lower Cost and Ease of Development

In hybrid mobile apps there is a unified development hence businesses don’t need to spend separately for building multiple versions of the apps for multiple platforms. Instead, hybrid frameworks allow mobile app developers to build a single version of the app and write and maintain individual code bases for many other platforms. This actually saves lots of money for these businesses which want to save money on app development and still want to generate all benefits of mobile apps including higher revenue and profits. There is one more benefit which hybrid app development offers which is that the companies which want to get ahead of the competitors and hit the market first can release the MVP before their competitors do so. This results in launching different solutions much faster, resulting in definite competitive advantage.

Provides Native Experience with Simple Backend

Comparatively native app delivers excellent and better user experience but a hybrid app is also not much behind. A hybrid app does provide the most of what native UX offers along with a simple backend structure. You have to use different hybrid mobile app development frameworks to build a hybrid app UX which beautifully connects to device specific functionalities. This kind of UX remains smooth even while working on bug fixes and updates across all the platforms. Mostly the users of hybrid mobile apps experience fluid native feel and as such no difference when they are used on multiple device platforms.

Provides High-Speed Performance

Till now native apps have performed beautifully and they have set high standards in terms of speed and performance. But when we talk about hybrid app development, speed is not an issue. When we compare hybrid app with other mobile app development options, we found that hybrid apps are quite faster than mobile web apps or responsive websites. Hybrid apps don’t have to rely much on the network communication therefore a hybrid app always runs quickly on the device screen even when there are many users. One good example of hybrid app is Twitter, the social media app which handles large amount of traffic each moment. It shows how hybrid app development can bring faster performance.

Provides Attractive UI/UX Designs

If any app wants to drive more users towards it then it should provide attractive design and consistent and reliable user experience. With hybrid app development, you can be sure that your mobile app will offer amazing UI experience and smooth performance for the mobile app users. Hybrid mobile apps provides attractive UI/UX designs which attract more users. They provide un-compromised operation and best look for each platform. That’s why they are welcome to app store more than any other apps. While using hybrid apps, users never face problems of low performance or high loading time even when it is used on multiple operating systems. This makes hybrid app the top choice for businesses which are looking for more engagement on both Android and iOS platforms.

Provides Offline Support for Apps

The hybrid app can provide offline support that’s why it can help so many people who have limited data consumption plans or if they live in a rural area or if they have connections which often get disrupted or even if they are always traveling. Pure web applications could be beneficial to only those users who live in urban areas with high-speed and uninterrupted internet connection. Offline support by hybrid apps keep the users connected to some of their app features even when they are not connected to network connection. Customers living in fast-paced place depend immensely on mobile apps which have limit number of attempts their apps take to reconnect. In hybrid apps, due to device’s API and benefits, users can store some of the data locally as offline storage, which is useful to those who are traveling or who don’t have good internet connection which disconnects often.

Final Note

We have just discussed about what is hybrid mobile app and what are its major benefits for businesses whether small or large. We now see that competition is increasing in the digital market each day hence it has become important to use the processes which offer greater speed and lower costs of mobile app development. Hybrid mobile apps solves most of these problems if used by companies to develop their mobile apps as not only they target each platform with separate native apps but they also help in finding the top spot in online app store market. Hybrid apps also integrated backend and some of the functionalities of the native apps hence offering the best of both. Therefore, the companies or businesses which want to take lead in the marketplace can choose hybrid mobile app development and take their business to new heights. Various major giants like Instagram, Twitter and Uber are already taking advantage of hybrid mobile app development.

Key Advantages of Hybrid Mobile App Development For Businesses