Top Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks for 2022

In the future, digital businesses will develop cross-platform apps. Every business will need an app in the post-Covid world. In addition, unless you have a ton of money to spare, you will need an app development solution that provides quality on a budget. We present to you cross-platform apps - handy little apps that you can run on Android, iOS, even Windows and other platforms, and you have to write code only once.

A cross-platform app can pack a powerful punch. The advantages of cross-platform apps for business owners include reduced costs and faster time to market. Yet the benefits don't end there. Apps for cross-platform platforms have a much wider market penetration because they are easily downloaded and can be used by anyone using any smartphone platform.

Building for a specific platform would limit you to a limited number of users (iOS or Android) and that's a bad bargain. By 2022, there will be 2.5 billion Android users and more than 1 billion iOS users. If you want your business to succeed, you must capture some of that market.

A cross-platform app allows you to develop apps that are ready for all major platforms, providing you with access to all 6.64 billion smartphone users in the world. Sounds great, right?

However, the advantages don't end there. Cost savings from cross-platform apps are substantial. A native app would require two developers, two codebases, and double the number of updates and maintenance. To make sure that the updates roll out promptly and that the maintenance is top-notch, you'll need to hire both teams on a retainer basis. Having two development teams can be very expensive.

It is for all these reasons that cross-platform app development has become the most preferred choice of entrepreneurs, startups, small to medium business owners, and anyone seeking high-quality apps at competitive prices.

What Are Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks?

You know you want to take your business further with cross-platform app development, so it's time to do your research on the right technology. In-app development, one of the first decisions you need to make is selecting the right framework.

Mobile application frameworks are software tools that are used to develop mobile applications. In the framework, we find all the tools we need to build an application.

Cross-platform development frameworks are built to allow developers to reuse the same code and deploy the app across multiple platforms. Listed below are some of the most popular platform-agnostic app development frameworks in 2022.

Flutter

In December 2021, there are more than 90,000 Flutter apps on Google Play, up from 50,000 in 2020. It shows just how popular Flutter is in 2022 with a jump of such a magnitude. Statistics from Statista show that 42% of developers all over the world use Flutter App Development. Google said 500,000 developers use Flutter every month in April 2020. This number has certainly increased in 2022, with a 10% month-over-month increase in March.

A direct competitor of Facebook's React Native, Flutter was originally developed as an open-source mobile UI framework that created native UI for each platform with just one codebase. As a result, the application looks and feels like a native app, giving users a high-performance application for half the price of an actual native app.

Flutter encourages developers to build apps to build what the user wants instead of worrying about which platform to build for. With Google Ambient Computing, developers can make apps for phones, tablets, sma Flutter is becoming increasingly popular among developers across multiple verticals.rt watches, smart TVs, and more.

A Google report breaks down the distribution of Flutter developers, showing that it is popular with startups, enterprises, freelancers, and self-employed developers. According to Google, 35% of Flutter's half-million developers work for startups, 26% are part of small companies, 19% are self-employed, and 7% work for design agencies. Flutter is gaining increasing popularity among developers from various industries.

Flutter is ideal for the development of cross-platform apps because of the following features:

Less Coding

Flutter uses Dart, an object-oriented language with a strong typing style. With Flutter's declarative and reactive typing style, developers do not need to use the Javascript Bridge and can write code much more efficiently. Because Flutter offers 80% code reuse, it can be used to deploy apps across multiple platforms with just one code.

High Performance

Flutter apps offer excellent performance comparable to native apps. As Flutter apps are designed specifically for that platform, they feel and look just like native apps, giving users the immersive experience they were seeking.

Hot-reload

Flutter has an extremely enticing feature: Hot reload. Thanks to reloading, you can see any changes to the code in real-time. So if you were to change the icon's size or colour, you wouldn't have to reload the entire application to see the changes take effect. With a hot reload, every single change you make will take shape before your very eyes.

Time and Cost Savings

The reusability of Flutter's code enables developers to release apps on multiple platforms in record time, enabling business owners to get to market faster and save up to 50% of their development costs.

React Native

Next is Facebook's react-native platform, which is also popular for cross-platform app development. Based on a Facebook hackathon project, React Native was originally developed so that Facebook products could be developed using it. When Facebook engineers realized they had built an interesting framework, they decided to open source it. Now 38% of developers in the world use React Native. React Native has been used by many large companies including Facebook, Microsoft, and Uber in their development projects.

React Native is a JavaScript-based framework that allows building native mobile apps that run on iOS, Android, and other platforms without having to write code multiple times.

Because React Native is built on React, which is a JavaScript library, it has a modest learning curve and anyone with a JavaScript background can easily grasp the concept and utilize React Native.

Code reuse is possible in React Native development since it is a cross-platform app development framework. While most of the code in React Native is common, some parts of the code are specific to each platform, enabling developers to tailor an app to that platform. Thus, applications built with React Native will look and function like native apps and will offer high performance comparable to those made for iOS or Android.

React Native utilizes Native UI components that allow developers to customise user interfaces based on user preferences and platform requirements. Components in this UI are like Lego blocks, allowing easy customization, and performance is Native.

Ionic

From startups to large enterprises, Ionic is used to build cross-platform mobile applications. As many as 10% of all apps on the Apple App Store and 16% on the Google Play store use ionic. Ionic launched in 2011, but it is still popular despite new frameworks such as Flutter and React Native.

Ionic is an open-source UI toolkit that lets developers build Hybrid Applications that feel almost as good as native ones in terms of aesthetics and performance. Based on Angular JS technology, it makes use of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to provide a number of mobile apps including enterprise apps, Progressive Web applications, mobile and desktop apps, etc.

Some of the most attractive features of Ionic are its ready-to-use components. It can work across many APIs, provides various plugins to support native features, allows custom coding for different platforms, and has a very loyal community.

Xamarin

In 2011, Xamarin launched as a streamlined, independently developed, open-source cross-platform framework that can build apps for iOS, Android, and Windows. A developer can reuse 90% of their code with Xamarin, decreasing development cost and time to market by a wide margin.

Xamarin is easy to learn and use since anyone with .net and C# skills can easily pick it up. Its easy integration with native libraries enables developers to customise Apps seamlessly and impart native functionality.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap, one of the earliest cross-platform players in 2005, was acquired by Adobe in 2011. Since Adobe has discontinued support for PhoneGap Build on 1 October 2020, it means that you will no longer receive any updates for this cross-platform app development solution.

The best cross-platform app development framework in 2022 is another one of those four, so it's recommended that you choose one of them for any new project you plan to launch in 2022.

Wrapping up

In conclusion, when it comes to choosing a cross-platform app development framework in 2022, Flutter and React Native will be the two most popular choices, followed by Ionic and Xamarin. The benefits cross-platform app development offers, including savings in time, money and convenience, are unquestionable. A cross-platform app can be developed in half the time it would take for a native app and can be deployed on all platforms at once.

The framework you choose for cross-platform app development has a big impact on how your software is designed and how your customers interact with it. For more information on which is the best framework for your project, or if you already know what you want and just need help finding the right cross-platform app development team, contact Moveoapps today for a free consultation. We will help you chart a course forward and create an account that perfectly fits your business goals.