Mobile Apps Types

Mobile apps type is bit confusing topic and I have observed different people have different opinions on this topic. Many people mixed the mobile apps types with its categories like Social Media apps, Gaming Apps, Utility Apps, Banking apps etc. and few know the concept but they limit to only two types of apps (Native and mobile Browser apps). In this post, I will try to explain all major types of mobile apps with their features which differentiate them from each other.

                             

First of all, let me clarify there are 3 types of mobile apps, Native, Mobile Web Based and Hybrid apps. Following is the brief explanation of each of these,

Native Mobile Apps

Applications which are installed on your mobile device and you can access them at any time without internet connection is called Native Mobile Apps. Gaming apps (e.g. Angry Birds) is an example of Native mobile apps. Mobile device memory and configurations are very important for such apps as they stored complete app data within device.

Mobile Web Apps

Applications which are designed and developed for mobile devices and are only accessed through mobile web browser are called mobile web apps. Although you can open any web app/site on your mobile browser but design and alignment issues will give you an idea whether its mobile browser specific app or desktop browser web app. Another difference between the mobile and desktop web apps is, mobile apps URL usually starts with ‘m’ which indicates it’s a mobile version of the app. For example “m.yahoo.com” and “m.gmail.com” are mobile web apps version of these sites. As all such apps data comes from the server and device memory have no impact on these apps. Moreover, separate PSDs are designed for these mobile versions of the apps to accommodate all its content on mobile screens.

Hybrid Mobile Apps

Such mobile applications which are installed on mobile device but they required to connect to internet to fetch their content. Instant Messengers (Skype), Social media apps (Facebook, Twitter) and E-commerce apps are example of such apps. These apps are also called client-server apps as their data comes from the server. Device memory is partially involved in such applications just for the installation as app data comes from the server.

Following table will describe differences in above mentioned types of mobile apps.

Feature	Native App	Hybrid App	Mobile Browser App
Development Tools	Objetive-C, Java, C	HTML, CSS, Javascript, Mobile development Frameworks (Phone Gap)	HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Distribution	App Store/Market	App Store/Market	Internet
Development Speed	Slow	Moderate	Fast
Application Maintenance	Difficult	Moderate	Low
Device Access	Full Access	Full Access	Partial Access