Mobile tech strategies

MOBILE TECH STRATEGIESCross Platform Innovation and Approaches

2016

www.gkim.digital

[email protected]

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MOBILE CROSS PLATFORM TECHNOLOGIES

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GKIM has been developing apps for many customers over the years. We have been presented with many different challenges to build high quality apps, at low cost and in double quick time.

Rising to these challenges has given us much experience in a wide range of mobile app development technologies and methodologies, including native apps, games and cross platform tools.

The choice of development approach depends primarily on the cost v quality trade off. GKIM recommends ionic for speed and ReactNative for quality but ask that publishers do not discount the good option of parallel native development. It might not cost much more whilst quality is generally unsurpassed.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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A relatively small percentage of a well designed mobile application

is actually OS specific.

The extra cost overhead for each extra native solution should never

be be more than 50% and could be a lot less.

Don’t lose sight of this bigger picture. Efficient architecture is as

important as the right cross pla-orm choice.

APP ANATOMY

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THE NATIVE OPTION

Native should always give best quality, assuming proper

methodologies are followed and design is implemented in parallel.

If the app is mission critical then there can be arguments to insist

on native.

QUALITY

We would argue that, native can also always be the fastest option,

assuming the availability of engineers to take a parallel

development approach.

An exception to this would be where an HTML5 solution preexists

that can be converted to a web app using tools.

TIME

Cost can be the only compelling argument for a cross platform

solution. It will be be higher but not extortionately so, as, cleverly

designed, many assets and capabilities will be OS agnostic.

Server side CMS, assets or logic behind an API.

Commonly used data or art assets.

App specific java script code libraries powering thin clients with identical logic.

COST

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Thanh Nien sought the quality of native and won a gold award because of it.

Dextr, the world’s fastest replacement keyboard, required deep integration

with native Android technologies.

Animation quality for our Nestle app would have been very hard to achieve

without native.

Social networking apps which use lots of 3rd party SDK’s which may not be

available for all cross platform tools should be native.

NATIVE APPS

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GAMES

Games, especially 3D games, require graphics capabilities

not generally supported by Unity and Cocos offer games

graphics support.

Unity generally surpasses Cocos now though has an

expensive license.

Unity let us extend its 3D graphics technologies with

patentable 3D painting capability for this ground breaking

game for DripDrops.

Cocos is good for 2D games such as these four we built for

Rakuten & Viber.

CROSS PLATFORM OPTIONS

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Two main classes of Cross Platform development methodologies exist. We discuss examples and pick our favorites.

1. OS GUI Replacement Libraries (compiled)

Tool Language Comment

ReactNative, backed by Facebook

Near native quality

Can co-exist within native applications

Lower quality

Requires PhoneGap to access native OS

JS / Markup Latest and best Native script. IOS stable. Android catching up.

Telerik Native Script

JS / Markup / CSS

More flexible, generally compatible with Angular JE

Xamarin C# Cannot reuse js & css. Requires new language

2. Native webkit based GUI (runtime)

Tool Language Comment

ionic HTML5 +Angular JS

Latest and best w angular design paherns

ReactJS HTML5 + JS Best rendering performance

Sencha HTML5 + JS Requires learning bespoke language

Titanium HTML5 + JS Requires learning bespoke language

CROSS PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT STORIES

Non Optimal Successes

Resounding Successes

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ACRA, a large organization with mission critical apps should always be looking to native. It’s quality suffered due to their choice of Sencha.

TeleConsult was mistakenly (by another developer) started in Xamarin, costing extra effort to deliver quality.

ASN’s marketplace app, a utility, not requiring native quality, is perfect for ionic.

H&M’s HTML5 app was a major achievement to get it working on all browsers.

SUMMARY

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Games Platforms Native Apps OS GUI Replacement Library Web Apps

Specialist engineers and Unity license fee required.

Cost

Quality

Parallel engineers required, but not as expensive as only covers part of build.

Learning curve applies before economies of cross platform development can be realized.

Ionic provides lowest cost option for web experienced engineers.

Unity can do things even native apps cannot achieve.

Generally the best. Almost as good as native. Will have flaws in rendering, esp animations and large graphics.

Best in class

Schedule Games wrihen for these platforms can be ported to mobile very quickly.

Effective parallel development can still be fastest.

Learning curve moderate.

Total dev time may be reduced.

Learning curve moderate

Total dev time may be reduced.

Best for Games Mission critical quality, money no object and parallel native developers are available.

Apps with high quality graphics expectaions and where learning curve is jusitified.

Utility apps where render quality expectations are not to demanding.

COST V QUALITY TRADE OFF

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