Accelerating Cross-Platform Mobile App Development Using Flutter
Over the last decade, there has been a substantial rise in the demand for mobile application development. As of today, Apple and Google host more than two million applications on their respective app stores. A majority of enterprises in eCommerce, retail, hospitality, and healthcare industries offer their products and services via cross-platform mobile apps. These apps enable customers or users to make online purchases, bookings, and schedule appointments on the go.
A mobile application could be the face value of a brand. It plays a crucial role in creating brand awareness and aids in improving customer engagement across mobile devices. Therefore, it is critical to optimize the application to consistently deliver great user experiences across all screens.
When it comes to cross-platform mobile app development, choosing the right software framework could be a challenging task. Nevertheless, it is also the most crucial step in your software development journey that determines the fate of the app. Flutter, a cross-platform application framework, is gaining popularity in the arena of mobile apps by offering promising solutions for developing cross-platform apps. In this post, we shall explore some major benefits of mobile app development using Flutter.
What is Flutter?
Developed by Google, Flutter is a software development kit (SDK) for mobile apps. It was developed to build mobile applications for app development platforms like Android and iOS.
Flutter is an open-source framework and offers a complete package of development tools, widgets, and frameworks. It enables app developers to deliver a better user experience. Although in its infancy, Flutter has already been used by companies like Alibaba and Tencent. Also, it is being used by Google on its ‘Google Ads’ platform. Therefore, Flutter is an effective tool for developing native-like apps on Android and iOS, using the same code base.
Benefits of Mobile App Development Using Flutter
Mobile app development using Flutter could be an effective way to enhance customer experiences by delivering engaging user experiences across mobile devices. Given below are the main features of Flutter that make it an ideal solution for cross-platform mobile application development. Subsequently, we shall analyze the benefits it delivers to enterprises in addition to simplified and accelerated development.
One Code, Multiple Platforms: Developers can use one codebase to develop apps for both Android and iOS platforms, due to Flutter’s cross-platform compatibility. As such, you don’t need to develop two separate apps for iOS and Android.
Hot Reload: One of Flutter’s most effective features is Hot Reload that enables developers to instantly view code changes on emulators, simulators, and hardware. Moreover, the application with code changes reloads in just a few seconds while the app is still running, without the need for a restart. The hot reload feature in Flutter offers a great deal of flexibility for building custom UIs and also simplifies bug-fixing.
Less Testing: Quality assurance processes can be faster if you have the same app for two platforms. Due to a single code base, the developers write automatic tests only once. Hence, Quality Assurance specialists get less work to do, as they have a single app to check.
Less Code: An open-source web application framework, Flutter uses Dart, object-oriented programming (OOP) language. The compilation of Dart with Just-in-Time (JIT) has improved the development cycles by providing hot reload capability. Using Dart, developers can create smooth animations and transitions that run at 60 FPS. Moreover, developers encounter fewer bugs as Flutter app development uses fewer codes.
Perfect for Minimum Viable Product (MVP): To showcase your products to investors, at an early stage, Flutter is an ideal app development framework. Developers can build a flutter mobile app that resembles native app experiences on both iOS and Android operating systems. App developers can create an MVP, using Flutter, to show investors the look of their products. For example, a newly launched eCommerce platform can create an MVP to show investors how their products will be showcased.
Amazing Widgets: The flutter framework has a rich set of widgets and the potential to create complex custom widgets. Using Flutter, beautiful and unique designs for your widgets can be created. Two sets of widgets are included in Flutter’s framework. Cupertino widget to imitate Apple’s iOS design and Material Design Widgets to implement Google’s design language.
Increased Time-to-Market Speed: As compared to its alternatives, the Flutter development framework works faster. A Flutter app is twice as fast as compared to the same app developed separately for Android and iOS. It is because the framework does not require any platform-specific code to achieve the desired UI visuals. It enables developers to implement all kinds of 2D UIs without interacting with native application counterparts. Above all, you get declarative APIs to build custom app UIs that significantly improves user experiences.
Own Rendering Engine: Unlike other platforms, Flutter allows you to perform a number of tasks with your apps. Without a high-performance cross-platform rendering engine, most of the aforesaid points are not possible. It uses Skia for rendering itself onto a platform-provided canvas. The UIs built using Flutter can be launched virtually, on any platform, because of the engine. Hence, you no longer have to adjust UI to transfer it to a platform, which simplifies the development process hugely.
Flutter Goes Beyond Mobile: Apart from Flutter app development on mobile, there are also Web and Desktop embeddings for Flutter these days. For instance, Google has presented a technical preview of Flutter Web at this year’s I/O conference. The web support makes it possible to run Flutter-based apps in web browsers without having to modify the source code.
The Flutter-based apps run seamlessly across all major platforms and operating systems including Android, iOS, Windows, web browsers as well as embedded devices. Moreover, the app will function properly with no changes to the Dart code.
Why Is Flutter a Great Choice From The Business Perspective?
For every business, few things pose drastic values. It includes the stability of a platform, its performance, a wide pool of talent, and the guarantee of successful product development. Flaws and issues in a platform or technology across any of the listed aspects lead to several risk factors. It may also translate into direct and indirect financial losses for your company.
Here we have discussed the main features and benefits of mobile app development using Flutter. The aforementioned aspects make Flutter a promising solution for businesses to overcome challenges and keep pace with the latest technologies. It has alternative cross-platform approaches and hence poses minimal risks to a business, making it an ideal platform for mobile app development.
Why Choose Oodles ERP For Mobile App Development Using Flutter?
We are a seasoned ERP development company that specializes in building custom enterprise solutions for web and mobile platforms. Our development team has considerable experience in cross-platform mobile app development using Flutter to address the diverse business needs of our customers. Our Flutter application development services enable enterprises to efficiently manage their operations on the go, with minimal complexities. We also have a team of experienced UI/UX designers that is skilled at creating interactive app interfaces for different screens. To learn more about our mobile application development services, drop us a line at erp@oodles.io.
