A Column Focused on the Benefits of Browser Based Applications over Native Applications

With smart phones streaking along at a lightning pace, the question arises what sort of applications for the mobile market would be beneficial for your business. With the arrival of the latest technology and ipads and smart devices, the market and the requirement for mobile based applications have rapidly grown in the past few years. Today, it has already become a great debate in the mobile application development community as to which application is preferred: the so called native app or the browser based approach. Each application has their own pros and cons and has their own fervent supporters. But for business owners it is crucial to cut through the noise and approach the best application based on their requirement and business environment. Why browser based applications are preferred more? A mobile browser based application is developed by using similar techniques and tools that are required to create regular websites and web applications. These mobile solutions can easily be accessed on the mobile browser and are specifically designed and optimized to function with the constraints of these browsers. With the increase in popularity of the HTML 5 standards, these applications are capable of providing functionality that may prove to be better than a native application. A browser based application is the one that requires some parts of it to be downloaded from the web each time and it can be accessed from any web based mobile devices. But the native application does not require any internet access and must be deployed or downloaded. These applications are platform and hardware dependent but a web application can be reformatted with CSS to suit any particular device. The native applications are specific to platforms like Blackberry, iOS, Android and Windows. Specific mobile applications have to be installed that can leverage the device hardware and the unique capabilities of the operating system. Any device with an internet connection and a web browser can access a mobile web application and these apps are accessible from any computer or mobile as there is no need of expensive and heavy hardware. Mobile development companies can easily work with flash with web applications but with a native application there are few problems with audio and video and flash also works only if the devices support it. Another most important reason why people still choose to use browser based applications are that the web links are shared easily and social APIs and widgets enable easy one click posting. All the data are stored in the server and mobile developers have more choices for design and easy access to web analytics. With native application, discussion is difficult if the data is disparate and the mobile application developers have control over design only through limited in iAds. One most interesting thing to note is that with the architectural differences between both the applications, the user experiences offered by both the interfaces are getting blurred and the result is that people are now referring to Hybrid applications that are a combination of both the applications.