I found the article in SD Times titled “Evans Data: Android apps faster to develop than iOS, Windows Phone apps” simultaneously interesting and confounding. It conveyed what I feel is true about mobile app development and that Android is the easier and faster MOS (mobile operating system) on which to produce applications. However, this eye-catching article did not convey any information on how this faster development occurred and why it’s faster. (I admit that I did not review the EVANS Data report, and perhaps the information that I’m interested in is in there.) There must be a reason, right? It did mention that over 90 percent of the app development effort is porting the apps themselves and that over 93 percent of the app development is cross-platform. So now I’m even more intrigued!
Which tools were used to create these ported cross-platform apps? The tools must play a very important part in the time/speed to market for the app, right? So, what I really need to know is, for those apps that developed faster than iOS and Windows Phone, how can I do that? What do I need to use? The answer is obviously not all native tools; that appeared to be the lower end of app development for Android as presented by this article. It must be a hybrid development platform that allows native and HTML apps? A follow-up to an article such as this SHOUTS for an article on how and with what were these apps developed. Data gathered and presented showing this is much more valuable than the questions left unanswered in this article. An article summarizing that information would be well read!
(Android is a trademark of Google, Inc.)