Mobile Application Development Tools and Softwares

Mobile Application Development Tools and Softwares

There are a lot of mobile application development tools and softwares coming in the market everyday as mobile application development is becoming popular. I will just talk about Phonegap, Sencha and Titanium mobile apps development tools as I have some experience on them. All these tools use web development languages like HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript to make the mobile apps cross platform which can run on iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Palm with single codebase.

These mobile apps development tools like Phonegap, Sencha and Titanium are giving tough competition to traditional approaches of mobile apps development languages like Objective C (for iPhone, iPad), Java (for Android and Blackberry) etc. In traditional approaches you have to develop different mobile application for different platforms and its very hard to maintain these types of mobile apps and also its very costly and complex.

So, there is a great need of mobile apps development tools which provide a single development platform for each mobile application across all mobile operating systems and devices.

1. PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a free and open source mobile application development framework that allows mobile apps developers to create mobile apps using standardized web APIs for all the platforms like Android, Palm, Symbian, BlackBerry, iPhone, iTouch and iPad devices. 

Phonegap uses  HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript to make cross platform mobile apps.

PhoneGap allows the developer to work with device hardware features like Accelerometer, Camera, Compass, Contacts, Files, Geolocation, Media, Network, Notifications and Storage.

PhoneGap has been downloaded over 1 million times and is being used by over 400,000 developers. Thousands of apps built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores and directories. 

2. Sencha 

Sencha also uses web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript to make cross platform mobile apps. Sencha was started in 2008 and claims over 2 million mobile application developer worldwide.

Sencha is the leading provider of open-source web application frameworks and tools to major enterprises and independent developers. Thousands of enterprise customers — including over 50% of the Fortune 100 — rely on Sencha technologies to power their most critical internal and external business applications.

Sencha has an active and growing developer community of over 450,000 users. There are Sencha developers in nearly every country of the world, so you’re certain to find one in your region. Not only does our community create amazing web applications with sencha frameworks, they also actively contribute to forums — answering technical questions and assisting other developers.

3. Titanium

Titanium Studio simplifies the mobile development process, allowing community developers to rapidly build, test, package and publish mobile applications across multiple devices and operating systems. The resulting native applications perform and behave just like they were written in Objective-C (iPhone and iPad) or Java (Android phone and tablets) to deliver rich user experiences.

The Eclipse-based Studio IDE enables you to build compelling cross-platform, native mobile applications – all from a single code base. You can build applications for tablets, smart phones, smart TVs, faster and at lower cost than any other environment.

With integrated mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) capabilities, as well as on-device debugging and an MVC framework (Alloy), Titanium Studio is the most comprehensive mobile development platform.