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 consideration 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 be better than the performance of an app that has to run through a browser.

Depending on what the customer wants, successful mobile app development therefore 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 continues to evolve rapidly and has become the dominant platform for internet access. Smartphone adoption in the UK has reached saturation levels, with 94% of the population owning smartphones in 2024, and predictions suggest 95% adoption by 2025. This widespread adoption has fundamentally changed how businesses and users interact with digital services.

Modern mobile web browsers now offer capabilities that were previously exclusive to native applications. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) have bridged the gap between web and native experiences, providing more native app-like experiences with significant improvements, particularly on iOS where they previously faced limitations. Features like offline functionality, push notifications, and device integration are now standard capabilities for web applications.

5G coverage has reached approximately 92% of UK premises, dramatically improving mobile internet speeds and reliability. This widespread 5G deployment has largely eliminated the connectivity and speed hurdles that previously limited mobile web experiences. The combination of ubiquitous high-speed connectivity and advanced browser capabilities means that mobile web applications can now deliver experiences that rival or exceed native applications in many use cases.

The mobile-first approach has become essential rather than optional, as mobile traffic consistently accounts for the majority of web browsing worldwide. This shift has driven innovations in responsive design, performance optimisation, and user experience design specifically tailored for touch interfaces and mobile contexts.

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 often the reverse is true where the mobile application is the priority and the website acts as an extension or alternate view into the application.

Flutter (Dart) and React Native (JavaScript/TypeScript) are the leading choices for cross-platform development, enabling a single codebase to serve both iOS and Android platforms efficiently. These modern solutions have surpassed older frameworks like Xamarin (C#), which are now less commonly used for new projects.

Another emerging technology is Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP), which is gaining traction for its ability to share business logic between iOS and Android while still delivering native user experiences.

Mobile app development is split between native and hybrid approaches, where the former involves writing code targeting the platform's compiler. The advantage here is that developers have better access to device instruments, such as GPS, accelerometers, and temperature sensors, and can write better-performing applications by utilising, for instance, native graphics or rendering libraries. However, native development requires that developers have to write separate code for each individual platform they wish to target, which increases the burden of knowledge they have to bear, and makes debugging quite painful if for example, an error appears on one platform but not another.

To help bridge the gap between mobile platforms, the concept of 'hybrid' development has taken off recently, where developers instead only have to maintain one codebase which can then be published to each platform. The primary disadvantage here is that a hybrid application tends to run in an abstracted environment, meaning that performance can suffer at times and there is considerably less access to platform-specific features as they are introduced, such as 3D touch on iOS. Over time, these disadvantages become less relevant as developers write plugins to cover these shortcomings while manufacturers make gains in device performance, lessening the performance penalty.

For relatively simple applications, hybrid apps would seem to be the future of app development as it allows for easier publishing and maintenance when targeting multiple platforms.

For platform-specific development, Swift is now the preferred language for iOS apps, offering safety and performance improvements over Objective-C, which is mostly reserved for maintaining legacy applications. On Android, Kotlin is the modern standard, though Java continues to be used, primarily for existing apps. Objective-C and Java are generally less favoured for new projects.

Native mobile applications are software solutions deployed directly onto devices such as phones. Many mobile applications link to internet services, with the application, or "app", handling user interaction natively. Mobile apps have the advantage that they provide a deep level of interactivity that is suited to device hardware – for example, using gestures or sensors like GPS. The difficulty with using mobile applications to deliver business services is the range of platforms in operation.

There are several dozen leading mobile operating systems on the market. Currently, the most widely-used platforms are Android, the open-source system variations of which are used by tech giants such as Google and Samsung, and iOS, which is the proprietary system used by Apple.

In terms of technologies for mobile apps, the list is long and depends on which platform (or platforms) you choose to target. Among the most commonly used programming languages for mobile applications are HTML5, Java, C++, Objective-C, Swift, and C#. Each major platform has a specific Software Development Kit (SDK), with its own tools to help with the design, testing, debugging and deployment. To decide which language is best for mobile development depends on the specifics of the project.

However, the complexity of mobile application development is such that targeting even a single platform involves extensive testing. Some businesses maximise development resources by balancing native user interaction with cross-platform resources at the back-end, in which case a mobile app can effectively function as an interface for a web application.
 

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.

Apple's iPhone remains a powerful and attractive platform for both consumer and business apps. 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 preferred language for iOS development is now Swift, which offers modern features and improved safety compared to Objective-C. While Objective-C is still supported, it is generally reserved for legacy projects, with most new iOS apps being developed in Swift.

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 smartphones no longer run on their classic BlackBerry OS (discontinued in 2013) or BlackBerry 10 (end-of-life in 2022). Modern BlackBerry-branded devices now use the Android operating system. However, the BlackBerry brand has struggled in the smartphone market in recent years, and no major new releases are expected. As a result, BlackBerry's presence in the mobile ecosystem has diminished, and support for legacy BlackBerry operating systems is no longer available.

Historical Context: RIM's Blackberry platform was long regarded as the mobile system of choice for business and professional users, despite the challenges the company has faced in the past. In 2013, the company changed its name from Research in Motion (RIM) to BlackBerry and launched a range of touch-screen devices. BlackBerry devices were widely embraced by business organisations and offered good support across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. BlackBerry had grown out of the business sector and made significant advances in the consumer market, introducing smartphones and tablets powered by the BlackBerry 10 operating system.

Like Android, BlackBerry hardware was varied, so users could access mobile sites and applications via differing screen sizes and controls. The BlackBerry platform delivered a wealth of enterprise services as standard, with BlackBerry Enterprise Server seen as a major asset for corporate users. Email on BlackBerry was particularly strong, so users who were dependent on a high level of security and reliability in messaging naturally tended towards this platform.

While iPhones focused on touchscreen interaction, as did Android devices to a slightly lesser degree, BlackBerry devices offered both touch and keyboard inputs, which was an important aspect for certain application categories.

Native apps could be deployed through the BlackBerry App World marketplace, which did not occupy as central a role for users as the app stores on iPhone and Android. However, newer Blackberry phones had the ability to run Android apps in addition to apps developed for Blackberry before the platform's discontinuation.

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