This document discusses mobile application development strategies, including native, hybrid, and mobile web. It notes that mobile is huge and multi-platform, with security things validated on servers. Resources are limited. Mobile web can be easy to build but slow, while native is fully integrated but hard to build. Hybrid applications combine responsive design, Canvas, and native wrappers. The biggest challenges are performance and hardware integration. Factors to consider include performance, hardware integration, app stores, testability, deployment speed, analytics, budget, and staff expertise.

1. Decisions, Decisi
ons
Native, Hybrid & Mobile Web
Will Iverson
CTO, Dev9

2. • Dynacron Group is now Dev9

3. • Dev9
–
–
–
–
Kirkland, WA software consulting firm
~40 people, ~3.5 years
Specializing in Continuous Delivery
Open source, Java, Mobile, NoSQL
• Will Iverson
– CTO. Author. Speaker. Since 1995.

4. • Mobile is huge.
• Mobile is multi-platform.
• Secure things are [validated] on servers.
– Money, digital goods, identity, etc.
• You don’t have infinite resources.

6. Wait…

7. http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

8. http://aplus.rs/2013/try-couch-to-5k-ios-and-device-charts/
Note: this particular chart is a smaller sample for one app

9. What exactly IS
mobile, anyways?
Touch?
Small screen?
Location aware?

10. •
•
•
•
Goals
People (aka resources)
Tools
Processes

11. • Concrete model for describing success
– Transactions?
– Sales?
– Reduce time to complete action?
– Ongoing user engagement?

12. • Give 30% to platform vendor?
– Give up 50% to retail today, maybe ok
– Give up 3% to CC today, maybe not
• Do you have the customer’s contact info?

13. • Let’s go build something!
• Need a dev team… tools… processes…

14. Native
• Use mobile platform
vendor SDK & Language
• Full device integration
• Excellent CPU/GPU
performance
• Hard to build
Mobile Web
• Use HTML5, JavaScript
to target mobile browser
• No device integration
• Slow, inferior CPU/GPU
experience
• Easy to build

15. Web
Application
Mobile
Browser
Native
Application
Web
Application
Native
Wrapper
Native App Store
* iOS+

16. • Native
• Web
– Responsive
– Canvas
• Hybrid
– Responsive
– Canvas

19. scirra.com/arcade

21. • Subjective vs. Objective
– 10,000s of sprites, physics, more… many high
perf demos
• Requires work
– Touch events, JS profiling
• Naïve implementations easy to screw up
– Use mobile appropriate JS frameworks
• Perf improvements help all targets

22. • Biggest
challenge
• Roll your
own, or use
a toolkit
KendoUI framework shown

23. • Performance?
• GPU!
• Hardware integration?
– Innovation!
• App Store!
– Discoverability!

24. • Testability
– Much easier to test mobile web
• Continuous Integration
• Deployment Time
– Days/weeks for app store updates
• Analytics
• Budget
• Staff Expertise

25. 3D Game?
No
Yes
Unity3D
2D Game?
No
Yes
Scirra
Construct2
Internal
Customers
Only?
Yes
Mobile Web
Only
No
Mobile Web
+ Hybrid

26. Q&A