There are new app development and game development platforms being introduced rapidly that are full filling consumer demands and are upgraded in order to cater to those needs. Though, it’s a win situation for the consumers as there are so many platforms to choose from, but it is becoming a challenge for app development companies do develop universal applications that serve the consumers belonging from multiple platforms at the same time.

Keeping in mind that mobile applications are not a luxury anymore, the need for the development of cross-platform applications is eminent. Businesses now operate globally with employees belonging from different regions using a wide array of devices. To be agile and responsive all the limbs of an organization have to work in cohesion, the same can also be said for custom enterprise applications and software that has the ability to keep everybody on the same page.

This is the reason why organizations prefer cross-platform development, so here are a few tools built to assist mobile app design companies create cross-platform applications like butter. So let’s have a look:

Xamarin:

What is Xamarin? Well, Put simply this tool allows coders to write their codes for applications using Visual Studio and dotnet. The developers through this software gets a shared library that is also written in dotnet, this is where all the application logic and data access coding goes.

Because this tool uses dotnet it is very easy for a coder to adapt to the tool. Xamarin introduces the user to a wide range of facades for different platforms. As the software is built on the skills that a coder of this age already possesses, it becomes easy for the user to develop applications that run on multiple platforms like Windows Mobile, iOS and Android all from the same project.

In some scenarios coders through this tool dot even have to create different platform facades, write the code only once and have that code run on multiple platforms. But if developers are looking to target one or a few specific devices, even that can be easily handled by using this tool as compared to coding on XCode and all other similar tools. The tool’s ability to share code allows for less timely and low cost project development.

RhoMobile:

This tools is known for offering a complete framework to developers for coding applications in multi-platform, native mobile and several enterprise applications. The tool comes with a plug-in known as Eclipse that is capable of creating, developing, debugging and testing apps with having an emulator or other supporting hardware. Through RhoMobile developers can access any offline information with a feature called Rho Connects.

Though a disadvantage when using this tool is that developer to access RFID capabilities have to pay for this feature for Windows/ CE. The Operational Relational Manager (Rhom) included in this tools lets app developers write code without the trouble of figuring out the database being used by the device.

PhoneGap:

PhoneGap is a tool developers were waiting for, the tools uses languages like CSS, Javascript and HTML. The tool supports an application framework that allows the coder to write code in the previously mentioned languages and then deploy them only once across all targeted platforms and it works almost like a native app employing native features.

The tools reduces the Time to Market for developers as they have to just develop a single application and release it across all mobile platforms which significantly reduces cost and effort. PhoneGap provides a strong backend system that allows the application to perform at a fast pace unlike other tools in which it is also the developer’s responsibility to make a strong backend system.

Monocross:

Monocross uses .NET framework that developers use to provide a library that is common for each application project. The tool provides unrestricted access to the device’s native APIs when the coding language is C#. Monocross is open-source and includes support for Microsoft, .NET, C# and Mono application framework.

Appcelerator:

This tool is known to possess the most stable SDK and provide a powerful framework known by the name of Alloy. Appcelerator is an open-source cross-platform application development tool which is very flexible and resilient at the same time.

This tool encourages rapid development through the development of applications that are native to different operating systems as it includes coding modules for iOS, Android and Windows which cuts down the amount of code that needs to be written. The really handy SDK in the tool includes support for Javascript and can work with Studio and Eclipse based development environments. Through this tool developers can add upto 5000 devices working on a wide range of APIs and combine them for application development. Appcelerator due to the incusion of Alloy assists app development for applications that work using Cloud services.