The debate as to which development platform is better for creating apps doesn’t seem to be concluding anytime soon. Should you be building mobile phone apps in native code on each platform or should you use a cross platform code, like HTML5? However, developers are just avoiding this debate and opting for what suits their requirements. The survey was conducted on 3500 developers and the results are surprising. In 2012, around 94 percent of the developers were betting on HTML5 to win the battle of the platforms.
In fact, 40 percent of the app entrepreneurs switched from native to HTML5 while 31 percent switched from HTML5 to native. This only goes on to show that developers have realized that there is no one size fits all solution in the application development process. Experts believe that the choice between native and hybrid approaches greatly depends on the circumstances, business requirements, programming skills and development timeline among others.
The Stats
Nonetheless, the percentage of developers preferring pure HTML5 over native platforms has gone up by 5 percent to 41 as compared to January 2013. On the other hand there has been a significant drop in the number of developers opting for pure native. While 15 percent of the application developers were using native coding to create apps as of January 2013, only 8 percent of the developers are using it today. The question is whether HTML5, a platform that imparts app-like interactivity to the web-native platform is enterprise ready.
The Views
App developers have different opinions of when HTML5 will be enterprise ready. One-third of the developers think that it is ready for implementation while a quarter think that it will be ready in the next 12 months. However, 43 percent think that HTML5 will not be ready until next year. The remaining six percent are under the impression that HTML5 will never be enterprise ready. Just 4 percent of the app developers are making applications for only iOS platform where as 13 percent are creating apps for all major platforms like iOS, Android and web.
The most interesting thing is that 91 percent of the app entrepreneurs are already developing applications on the HTML5 platform and 53 percent of them believe that it is the way to go multi-platform that offers all benefits of being web-native. Steve Jobs, however, did not want native applications on the iPhone and encouraged the development of web applications. Looking at the success of the Android application store, it can be said that everything hasn’t gone in favor of web applications.
Today, app entrepreneurs are not religious about native, HTML5 or hybrid applications. They choose to focus on a platform that best suits their business needs.
