Quite a few companies are reclaiming mobile app development these days. Some are moving outsourced development in-house, and others are consolidating line-of-business development projects under a single department. In both cases, one of the most popular questions they ask Gigaom Research is whether to go native, hybrid, or HTML. It’s a perfectly valid question, but in many cases, they’re asking it for the wrong reason.
“Native or not” remains an important choice when you’re concerned with application functionality. HTML-based development (the “mobile Web”) trades performance and control for increased code reuse across devices. Native apps, coded specifically for a target platform, take longer to develop and port to other platforms, but allow developers to squeeze out every ounce of device performance or write to specific hardware features. By placing HTML and JavaScript inside a native container, hybrid apps split the difference between the two, combining a large amount of code reuse with substantial device connectivity and performance…
View original post 527 more words
Tech at Peak 