Developing Apps for Mobile Phones

The current popularity of smartphones is mostly due to the possibility of selecting mobile apps that suit one's needs. It is tempting for a developer to conclude that the development of mobile apps is simple. Unfortunately, this is not yet the case. Indeed, there are so many different mobile app paradigms and the choice for the appropriate one could be a challenging task. In fact, understanding which mobile app paradigm fits best to a specific development circumstance is crucial and could have direct influence on quality, development cost and therefore sale revenue of the apps. The goal of this paper is to contribute to the selection of suitable mobile app paradigms in their development. Five mobile paradigms namely native apps, platform-based apps, mobile widgets, Web apps and HTML mobile apps are identified and described. They are then evaluated from developer viewpoint based on a set of selected criteria. The outcome of the evaluation suggests which paradigm fits better to a certain type of apps and also developers. In order to ensure the objectiveness and accuracy of the evaluation, we build an object recognition app, which is very challenging and exciting to develop, using the two most promising paradigms.