Mobile App development is the process of developing an application for mobile devices such as mobile phones and digital assistants. Each mobile application is unique to the device, considering different mobile screen sizes, hardware specifications and configurations. These applications can be pre-installed on phones during manufacturing platforms or delivered as web applications to provide an application like experience within a web browser.

The platform needed to develop, build, deploy and manage mobile applications consists of several components and tools.

Front end development tools enable creation of user interface and user experience. Some of the common platforms are Accelerator, Android, Blackberry, Codename One, iOS SDK and many more These platforms provide UI design tools, SDK’s to access device features and cross platform support.

Back end development tools provide reusable services like integration with back end systems, data services, user authentication and authorization and the business logic implementation. Some of the common platforms for developing the back end are GO!AppZone, WebORB integration server, Metismo and many more.

Security – There are additional add on features to be developed which include App wrapping security, Data encryption and reporting.

Android App Development

We have professionals to develop agile mobile apps using Android platform. Android apps are developed using Kotlin, Java and C++ programming. Other tools needed to support android app development include Android App studio which is the integrated development environment or the Eclipse IDE. Apache Ant and Gradle are powerful tools for building the mobile app. The Android SDK tools are used to compile the code along with data into a APK file (an android package with .apk suffix). This is the file that android powered devices use to install the app.

 

Each Android app is developed with below features

 

Security – Android operating system is a multi-user Linux system in which each app is a different user. The system sets permissions only to user ID assigned to that app for access. Each app is created in a very secure environment. The app can access only those components for which they are given access.

App components – There are four different types of app components and each component is an entry point for a user to enter and use the app.

  • Activities
  • Services
  • Broadcast receivers
  • Content providers

Activities – An activity is the entry point of the app for the user. It represents a single screen with a user interface. In an eCommerce app, one activity can be to show list of goods and another activity to place an order. The activity keeps track of what user is interested and accordingly prioritizes the processes.

Services – Service is a component that runs in the background to perform long duration operations or to run remote processes. Example of service is playing a music in the background. These services do not have a user interface.

Broadcast receivers – A Broadcast receiver enables the system to execute events outside the regular user process flows, thereby allows the app to respond to system wide announcements. The system can broadcast to other apps that are not currently running as well. Example is to send a notification to the user about a particular event.

Content providers – Content provider manages the app data that is stored in the file system, database, on the web or any other storage location. Any other app with permissions can access the content by passing a query to the content provider. Example of content provider is user’s address. Content providers are important for reading and writing data that is private to the app.

Activating components – Three of the four component types—activities, services, and broadcast receivers are activated by an asynchronous message called an intent. Intents bind individual components to each other at runtime.

Mobile application development is growing at a fast rate and mobile app development is becoming more critical for many businesses with billions of people worldwide using smartphones. Users spend more time on their mobiles in apps and there are millions of apps in various app stores.

 We have a professional team with mobile application developers. Mobile UI developers focus on user-friendly interface, constraints, contexts, screen, input, and mobility. The backend developers enable data routing, security and user access management and service orchestration.