With digital businesses rapidly replacing traditional business models, mobile apps are growing increasingly popular. For business owners, these apps are the most effective means of reaching out to their customers. Customers, on the other hand, access the services offered by the app with a simple tap of the finger. In other words, a mobile app offers a win-win solution. This is evident from the fact that Statista.com estimates the global app market revenue across most market segments to reach around 613 billion U.S. dollars by 2025.

The burgeoning demand for mobile apps is undoubtedly proven by another Statista.com report, which claims that around 5K+ apps are getting added to Google Play Store and App Store every day.

So, if you are keen to develop a mobile app to leverage this expanding market, you can hire a dedicated developer or a freelancer to build the app. Alternatively, you can hire the services of an expert mobile app development company.

In case you decide to go for a dedicated developer, you may not be able to optimally utilize the resource after the app is developed. And, in the case of a freelancer, you have the additional task of tracking the work delivered against time. To mitigate these challenges, the industry is increasingly opting to hire an expert mobile app development company.

In this blog, therefore, let’s examine the benefits of hiring such a mobile app development company. But before we start, it is good to be sure of the type of app that suits your requirements. To help you make the right choice, let’s understand the different types of apps available and what each of them offers.

Types of Mobile Apps:

Native app: This type of app is built particularly for the operating system of a mobile device. Therefore, you can either have a native Android app or a native iOS app. Such apps are built using programming languages like Java, Python, C++, React etc. Instagram and Skype are some examples.

The advantage of a native app is that it is faster, more reliable, and makes optimum utilization of mobile device resources. On the flip side, the code written for developing such an app is platform-specific and cannot be reused for any other platform. This drives up the cost and effort of developing and maintaining such apps.

Web app: You can access a Web app via a Web browser and develop it using languages such as HTML5, CSS, JavaScript etc. OLX, BookMyShow, and Pinterest are some examples of Web apps.

The benefit of Web apps is that they are not platform-specific, hence there is no need to customize to a specific platform or OS. This lowers the development cost.  Moreover, since we do not need to download Web apps, they do not take up space on mobile devices, unlike native apps.

However, being browser-specific, Web apps depend on the browser used in the mobile device. Also, they do not work completely offline. Even if they have offline versions, you need an Internet connection to back up the data on the mobile device.

Hybrid app: These are Web apps that look and feel like native apps. Using a mix of Web technologies and native APIs, hybrid apps are built using Ionic, Objective C, Swift, HTML5, and others.

The plus point of a hybrid app is that it is faster and more economical compared to a native app. It also loads easily so that it can be used in places with slow Internet connections. Further, it uses a single code base so there is much less code to maintain. But the minus point of hybrid apps is that they lack power and speed, unlike native apps.

Now that you have a fair understanding of each type of app along with their pros and cons, you can decide the type that best suits your requirement. Next, it is time to find out a mobile app development company that can build the app that best reaches out to your potential customers.

So, what are the benefits of hiring such a company? Let’s see…

Optimal Resource Utilization: A mobile app development company has a team of expert developers trained to understand your requirements and deliver them within your time and budget. Not only are they skilled in the languages required for developing apps, but they are also updated on the latest technologies and industry trends. This means they know what appeals to customers and how the app can best cater to them.

Apart from the professional developers, the company gives you access to a team of graphic designers and project managers. So, once you sign up with the company, the project managers ensure that the app development work is run like a project with robust planning, execution, monitoring and control. Since most companies are practising the Agile methodology, you can even demand to view increments of the software as it progresses through the development lifecycle.

In the process, you can be confident that the app is shaping up to suit your requirements and major rework can be avoided at the end.

Tying up with such a company provides the additional benefit of up-to-date tools, licenses, and software languages, all as part of a package you get when you sign up with them. Collectively, the optimal usage of resources under the strict surveillance of project managers reduces the development cost of the app. Hiring a developer, permanent or freelancer does not offer these benefits to you.

Quality: By virtue of the training and expertise of developers working with mobile app development companies, you are assured of the quality of the app. Knowledge of developers to determine the right type of app, the platform, the features etc. ensure that the app meets the requirements of your target customers.

More importantly, the developers are well-versed in the security requirements so that they can design the app with high-end security features. This guarantees that the data and information in the apps remain secure. The security of an app is crucial for its success because customers want to be confident that installing an app on their mobile devices does not compromise the security of their data in any way.

Support Availability: When you hire an expert mobile app development company to build an app for you, they create a project team with dedicated developers, designers, and a project manager. This team is committed to not only delivering the project to meet the requirements and the timelines but also providing support services round-the-clock. In other words, you have a skilled team available 24x7 to address your queries and support requests.

Additionally, in case there is a need to make changes or updates in the app to tune to the dynamic industry demand, the knowledge of the team having worked end-to-end on your project comes in very handy. In other words, the cost and time of making app enhancements are minimal.

Even more importantly, legal issues arising from any fraud or hacking, are kept at a minimum by the security features built into the app. In the eventuality of any legal issue, however, the team of experts are quick to provide the necessary guidance and support to you.

Summing up:

If you are impressed by the benefits listed above and are indeed keen to find a mobile app development company, tie up with one that assigns a dedicated pool of resources to your project who remain committed throughout the project lifecycle. Even after the project completes, they must continue to offer you support to cater to any changes or improvements in the app.

In other words, starting with understanding the Voice of the Customer, designing the app, building it, and following a rigorous testing cycle, the company ensures that you get the best quality app delivered within the agreed budget and time. Their product development methodology and tools used while delivering your app must be state-of-the-art to help you achieve a high RoI.

So, if you are planning to build an app, do thorough market research and partner with a mobile app development company that brings you an edge over your competitors. Launch the app to reach out to your target customers and then sit back and watch the magic as your business grows by leaps and bounds...