Mobile Applications

Mobile devices are the fastest-growing enterprise platforms in IT, with custom software development companies like Blueberry designing every possible mobile application to run on tablets and smartphones.

The fundamental consideration with delivering bespoke business applications over mobile devices is the wide variety of smartphone and tablet computers, and the ever-increasing number of features each device offers. This is important since mobile apps can be designed in one of two ways – using a web browser as its destination, or a dedicated app for each mobile device.

The advantage of using the web browser approach is that you don’t have to develop a separate application for each platform. Of course, it’s never as simple as that, but we can still write versions of an application for many different platforms using a single language and many pieces of reusable code.

With a dedicated app for a particular mobile device, there are cost implications associated with development. At the same time, a dedicated app will almost certainly perform better than an app that has to run through a browser.

Depending on what the customer wants, successful mobile app development often involves a combination of technologies and techniques. This is where a diverse skill set, together with an understanding of the mobile landscape, is essential to provide businesses not only with high-quality and relevant development services but also effective and ongoing guidance in this time of accelerating change.

The challenges at this stage in mobile technology are mirrored by an ever-increasing range of opportunities for businesses to implement new and improved processes. In general, there are two main approaches to delivering business solutions over mobiles:

1. Web

The mobile web has undergone enormous advances over the past few years. According to research by the UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, approximately 66 per cent of adults in the UK are now using smartphones, and around 50 per cent are predicted to be using tablet computers, with the surge being driven by the increasing take-up of mobile broadband, providing faster online access. Many more mobile users now have some kind of internet access thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and generous data plans.

Although the functionality of mobile web browsers is now on par with their desktop counterparts, there are still some hurdles in terms of network connectivity and speed depending on user location – this is expected to improve as 5G becomes widely available.

2. Mobile Apps

Mobile applications are software solutions deployed directly onto devices such as tablets and phones – many of these tie into internet services in order to provide extended functionality of a website, although in some cases the mobile application is the priority and the website acts as an extension.

Mobile app development is split between native and cross-platform (previously called “hybrid”).

• Native development involves writing code targeting the platform’s compiler, giving developers full access to device features such as GPS, sensors, and native graphics rendering. On iOS, Swift is now the preferred language (replacing Objective-C for most new projects), while on Android, Kotlin has largely taken over from Java, though Java is still used in legacy systems. Native apps usually offer the best performance and integration.
• Cross-platform development has matured significantly. Today, Flutter (Dart) and React Native (JavaScript/TypeScript) are the leading frameworks, surpassing older solutions like Xamarin (C#). These frameworks allow developers to maintain a single codebase while publishing to both iOS and Android with near-native performance. In addition, Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) is gaining momentum for sharing business logic across platforms, even when UI layers are still written natively.

While cross-platform solutions make it easier to target multiple platforms and reduce costs, native apps still provide the deepest access to hardware features and the highest possible performance. In practice, many projects blend approaches, using cross-platform frameworks for most functionality but falling back to native code where necessary.

In terms of technologies, the ecosystem has shifted from older mobile programming staples such as C++ and Objective-C to newer, platform-optimized choices like Swift, Kotlin, and modern cross-platform frameworks. Each major platform still provides its own Software Development Kit (SDK) with tools to support design, testing, debugging, and deployment.

The complexity of mobile application development means that even targeting a single platform involves extensive testing. Many businesses maximise resources by balancing native user interaction with cross-platform resources at the back-end, so that a mobile app effectively functions as the interface for a web-based system.

Google’s Android operating system has been going from strength to strength over the past few years. Having initially been seen as a platform of interest mainly to geeks, Android is now the #1 smartphone operating system in terms of market share in the UK. Moreover, with the platform’s adoption by electronics giants such as Samsung, Android has firmly established itself as the primary operating system of the mobile computing sector – for now at least.

The latest research puts Android usage at around 80 per cent, with iOS adoption at around 18 per cent. These figures from research firm Gartner reveal that the smartphone industry continues to be largely a two-horse race between iOS and Android, with the two mobile operating systems combined for 98.4 percent worldwide market share.

Android’s growth is partly down to the openness of the platform, which is available on phones from across the market and from various hardware manufacturers, making it accessible to a more diverse range of users than iPhone, which runs the closed, proprietary iOS system developed by Apple.

Mobile apps available on the Android platform are also subject to very little control, which produces a great deal of variety and flexibility but naturally results in a higher proportion of poor quality applications in circulation.

Google’s approach is the opposite of Apple – which retains total control over its mobile phone operating system. Google’s initial idea was to make a new phone operating system which would be open and free. Their hope was that this would encourage innovative development of both phones and applications. Google has invested in Android because it expected that Web searches would increasingly happen on mobiles, and it wanted to be able to advertise to mobile users.

Although Google’s position within the mobile world seems very strong right now, it is still difficult to say how things are going to progress.

The Android system is offering a good level of integration with business services such as Microsoft Exchange, and the open nature of the platform makes integrating with existing enterprise applications relatively straightforward for developers.

The iPhone was of course in a dominant position as the advance of the smartphone took shape, and the platform is still in a very powerful place. Although business users tended toward BlackBerry in the past, both iPhone and Android have continued to make considerable headway in enterprise as well as consumer markets.

The iPhone offers support for external business utilities such as Microsoft Exchange and, unlike Android, iPhone apps are subject to serious vetting by Apple themselves before users can deploy them – and even then, they can only buy the app through Apple’s App Store. The natural downside to this heightened level of control over the platform as a whole is a lack of flexibility. But for business applications the plus side is a virtual guarantee of quality and reliability for the end user – and ultimately for any business processes being implemented through the technology.

With the hugely popular visual designs and interaction models Apple is famous for, the iPhone is certainly an attractive platform for commercial applications. Apple has been responsible for developing innovative features whose success has prompted other platforms to emulate them, such as multi-touch interaction and Apple Pay.

Blueberry has the Objective C and hybrid development skills necessary to develop iPhone programs, and we would be very interested in discussing this with customers.

Although iPhone has lost considerable smartphone ground to Android and other competitors, it is generally still seen as the platform to beat, and continues to be a market leader in many ways.

BlackBerry was once regarded as the mobile system of choice for business and professional users, thanks to its strong focus on security, reliability, and productivity features such as enterprise email. In 2013, the company changed its name from Research in Motion (RIM) to BlackBerry and launched a range of touchscreen devices powered by the BlackBerry 10 operating system. However, BlackBerry 10 reached end-of-life in 2022, following the discontinuation of the company’s earlier classic BlackBerry OS in 2013.

Modern BlackBerry-branded smartphones now run on Android, offering access to the same app ecosystem as other Android devices. Despite this transition, the BlackBerry brand has struggled to remain competitive in the smartphone market, and no major new releases are expected.

Historically, BlackBerry devices stood out for their physical keyboard options alongside touchscreen input, which made them popular with users who valued fast, precise text entry. They also integrated with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, once considered a major asset for corporate users requiring secure communications.

While BlackBerry phones could run both native BlackBerry apps and, in later years, Android apps, the platform has effectively faded from mainstream consumer use. Today, BlackBerry is more associated with its enterprise software and security solutions than with smartphones themselves.

Want To Learn More? See Examples of Our Work >>