Native, Web-Based, or Hybrid Apps for Mobile? mrc Weighs In

February 12, 2013 Alex Woodie

Mobile application development has taken the world–and the IBM i midrange–by storm. But there are important decisions to make before embarking upon a mobile app development strategy, namely, should you develop native apps, build apps that run in the Web browser, or take a hybrid approach for mobile devices? Development tool maker mrc recently published a white paper on the topic.

The title of mrc’s white paper, “Native mobile apps: The wrong choice for business?” makes mrc’s position on the matter fairly clear from the get-go. In almost no situations does it make sense for a business to build native apps for the four major mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Windows, and Blackberry. (By the way, that number balloons from four to eight when you consider the tablet version of each mobile OS.)

Businesses can get everything they need in a mobile development strategy with a Web or hybrid approach, which eliminates the high cost and risk associated with native development, the company says. The 10-page paper provides easy-to-read summaries of the capabilities, advantages, and disadvantages of each approach.

“Over the past couple years, we’ve run across many companies who don’t completely understand their mobile app options and wrongly assume that native apps are the best choice,” says Sal Stangarone, senior product consultant for the Chicago, Illinois, software company. “Hopefully, this white paper will educate companies considering mobile apps, and help them avoid any costly mistakes.”

Mrc’s template-based application development tool, m-Power, enables customers to create J2EE-based applications for IBM i servers that feature Web and mobile client interfaces. The software supports all major mobile OSes (and some minor ones like Palm and Nokia), and supports Web and hybrid mobile models.

You can download the paper at www.mrc-productivity.com/Research/whitepapers/NativeAppsWrongChoice.pdf.