Why Xamarin is Best for Building Cost-Effective Mobile Apps

The world is rapidly changing and so is technology. Today’s world is all about mobility. Naturally, mobility is a top priority for businesses and so is the development of apps for major platforms as this adds to the branding and profits of the organization.

However, native implementation for platforms such as iOS, Android and Windows still remains a challenge due to cost and time being a significant factor. As the central code base is not platform agnostic, it suggests that the mobile application development costs are directly proportional to the number of platforms the business chooses to support. Not to mention, the additional cost incurred for hiring the necessary skillsets required for mobile app development. Moreover, once the app is launched on the respective app marketplaces, maintenance and support costs also go up as these activities require different skill sets altogether for different apps respectively.

Thus, businesses are switching to much better, faster and simpler way to build apps. Smart businesses are using next gen cross-platform mobile development frameworks like Xamarin that save on development and maintenance costs.

In this blog, we will explore why Xamarin may just be the perfect fit for you and how you can build robust applications with Xamarin

Xamarin Application Development distinguishes itself in several ways -

• Native User Interfaces: Apps are developed with standard, native user interface controls
• Quick Development: The same code can be shared on all major platforms – iOS, Android, Windows and Mac. This accelerates the development process
• Easy Maintenance: As there is a single code base in C#, maintenance costs reduce drastically by leveraging existing teams, tools and code
• Easy to Learn: Unlike other mobile app development platforms that require diverse programming environments, for Xamarin you are required to know only one language – C#
• Lesser scope for Errors: The Xamarin Test Cloud aids automatic testing of apps, thereby immediately taking error-checking to a whole new level of accuracy

Build robust mobile applications using Xamarin without the hassle of hiring in-house. Get in touch today!

How does Xamarin effectively reduce Cost of Mobile App Development?

Shared Code

As you already know, mobile apps work best when they’re designed with a particular type of device in mind. Xamarin efficiently collates the code that has been written for an app designed specifically for a single type of device, so that it can be reused while building a version of the app that operates on any other type of a device as well.

For e.g.: If you are building an app for an Android device using Xamarin. For Android, you are able to use 80% of the code when you switch to building the app in Xamarin. Whereas for Ios, the other 20% will go into the user interface which is entirely exclusive to iOS devices.

Thus, Xamarin saves the mobile app developers from having to build two different apps right from scratch to deployment, and build just one while the other one for another platform is already ready. Obviously, this shared code results in a significant cut-down of the development process, which in turn reduces costs!

Reduced Costs

If businesses insist on clinging to the traditional native approach to developing mobile apps, it would need 3 different types of developers – one, who are proficient at Objective C to work with Apple apps, two - Java for Android and three - C# for Windows apps. As you may imagine, for a developer to toggle back and forth between all these languages can be quite a daunting task.

Additionally, as several businesses allocate teams dedicated to respective mobile app development platforms, Xamarin app development will significantly lower the workforce of skilled developers needed for each app individually.

Comprehensive suite

Xamarin only requires you to be well-versed with C# only. And instead of working for numerous Integrated Developer Environment (IDE), developers can simply work in the Xamarin Studio which provides all the Software Developer Kits (SDK) that are required to build apps for various devices.

Usually, the ultimate result of your mobile app would either be an increased customer engagement or a high ROI. But before they go live, it is very necessary to have a quality of your app in order to reap favorable results. Here, quality analysis and testing plays a major role. The Xamarin Test Cloud powers the functionality of your app and tests it on multiple devices automatically. Thereby ensuring a quality product at the end of the development.

In addition, Xamarin Insights can then be used after the launch of the app, to track and analyze the performance and usage patterns that signify trends and raise alerts about sudden crashes if any and also on how the users respond to your apps. These accurate statistics allow to track behavior patterns with previous versions of the mobile app and thus build customized, brand new versions based on the derived insights.

Still not sure if Xamarin is the right cross-platform mobile application development framework for you? checkout this comparison that will help you make the informed decision.