Today, there are a handful of different platforms for mobile phones. Writing an application natively for each mobile operating system is time consuming and expensive. This situation has created a need for using cross-platform frameworks, that allow programmers to create an application once and run it on all platforms. The problem is that it is not certain whether cross-platform apps can fully replace native ones, or if by using cross-platform tools some desired qualities are lost. Investigating this issue would allow to find out which one of these two application development methods is better, or in which situation it is better to choose one over the other. Such knowledge would allow to decrease development time and costs. Companies that create mobile applications on a daily basis have expertise in this area. Thus, thirteen interviews were done with thirteen distinct businesses in order to research this problem. The results showed that native development produces higher quality applications, but there are some situations where it might be better to use cross-platform frameworks.

This master thesiss goal is to map available tools for support of cross-platform native mobile app development. Main goal of thesis is to choose such tool and present it in form of app development. To accomplish this goal several criteria with different importance have to be defined. These criteria are used for choosing of most suitable tool. This thesis has two outputs. First one are criteria that can be used again or amended for some similar tool rating, like this one. Second output is cross-platform mobile app developed with Xamarin tool. Structure of this thesis copy secondary goals that support main goal: mobile OS are presented, name cross-platform native app is defined, define criteria, describe selected tools, rate them and demonstrate development of simple app on selected tool.

The first decision in an application development project is choosing the application development platform. Until recently, native application development was the dominant development platform used. The recent increase in popularity of cross-platform development has made this decision to choose between native and cross platform development platforms even more difficult. There is a problem of a lack of guidelines on choosing between native and cross platform development. This lack of guidelines can lead companies to incur costs since application development is a time and money intensive process. The purpose of the thesis is to provide guidelines on when to choose between native application development and cross platform development. This thesis utilized qualitative methods to perform a comparative analysis between native and cross platform development. This analysis was done by building a weather application using native platform development and Flutter, which is the cross-platform development tool we have chosen. We used five comparative criteria to perform the comparative analyses. The results of the thesis are the set of guidelines that are obtained by performing a comparative analysis between native and cross platform development using five comparative criteria. These results will aid people involved in the application development process in making an informed decision of what development platform to use. / Det första beslutet i ett applikationsutvecklingsprojekt är att välja applikationsutvecklingsplattform. Fram tills nyligen var inbyggd applikationsutveckling den dominerande plattformen som användes. Det ökande populariteten för plattformsoberoende utveckling har gjort det ännu svårare att välja mellan inhemska och plattformsoberoende utvecklingsplattformar. Det finns en brist på riktlinjer för att välja mellan inbyggd och plattformsoberoende utveckling. Denna brist på riktlinjer kan leda till kostnader för företag eftersom applikationsutveckling är en tids- och resurskrävande process. Syftet med rapporten är att tillhandahålla riktlinjer för när man ska välja mellan inbyggd applikationsutveckling och plattformsoberoende utveckling. Denna rapport använde kvalitativa metoder för att utföra en jämförande analys mellan inbyggd och plattformsoberoende utveckling. Denna analys utfördes genom att bygga en väderapplikation med inbyggd apputveckling och Flutter, som är det plattformsoberoende utvecklingsverktyget vi har valt. Vi använde fem jämförande kriterier för att utföra de jämförande analyserna. Resultaten av rapporten är den uppsättning riktlinjer som erhålls genom att utföra en jämförande analys mellan nativ apputveckling och tvärplattformsutveckling med hjälp av fem jämförande kriterier. Dessa resultat kommer att hjälpa personer som är involverade i applikationsutvecklingsprocessen att fatta ett välgrundat beslut om vilken utvecklingsplattform de ska använda

В результате проекта создается приложение для смартфонов, планшетов и компьютеров, что позволяет преподавателю дистанционно проводить обучение. Это приложение будет иметь доступ к видеоурокам, тестам и заданиям. При входе в приложение вам необходимо ввести свою личную учетную запись, указав логин и пароль, которые будут разосланы преподавателем. После ввода данных обучающимся будут видны доступные ему материалы. В задачах будет возможность прикреплять документы для проверки. Также в задачах и тестах будет возможность оценить производительность обучающегося. Задачи этого проекта - упростить преподавателю взаимоотношения со студентами, проверить задачи и тесты. / As a result of the project, an application is created for smartphones, tablets and computers, allowing the teacher to conduct training remotely. This application will have access to video tutorials, tests and assignments. When login to the application will need to enter your personal account by login and password that the teacher will tell you. After entering the student will be visible materials available to him. In the tasks will be the ability to attach documents for verification. Also in the tasks and tests there will be an opportunity evaluate the performance of the student. The tasks of this project are, to the teacher to simplify the relationship with the students, check the tasks and tests.

The scope of this thesis is to design tools to support business processes on mobile platforms. The work deals with both the Enterprise Resource Planning systems issue, as well as the database synchronization and the possibilities of secure data transmission between the mobile device and the server. The work also includes familiarization with the most widely used mobile platforms and tools for multi-platform application development. The last part of the thesis comprises a model of an application meant to support business processes on mobile devices, including a description of its implementation, used tools and testing.

Utvecklingen av mobila hybrid applikationer har ökat drastiskt under det senaste årtiondet. Med tanke på mångfalden i hur stora företag börjar investera i ramverk med support för utveckling av mobila hybrid applikationer (multiplattforms ramverk), ökar nödvändigheten av aktuella studier inom detta ämnesområde. Facebook och Google är två välkända företag som har utvecklat React-Native respektive Flutter. Dessa multiplattforms ramverk utvecklas kontinuerligt och skillnader uppstår inom teknologierna hos ramverken vilket gör nya studier mer lämpliga. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilket ramverk som bidrar med bäst produktivitet för utvecklaren med tanke på bristen av studier inom ämnet. Specifikt har en fallstudie utförts där studiens frågeställningar har besvarats.   Respektive frågeställningarna blev uppdelade i tre delfrågeställningar där varje fråga fick angivna kriterier att följa i fallstudien och båda ramverken blev tilldelade poäng om tillhörande kriterium för varje fråga var uppfylld. I slutet av studien räknades ett medelvärde ut som tilldelades till båda ramverken. Resultaten visade att det finns små skillnader i form av dess bidrag med bäst produktivitet för utvecklaren. / The development of hybrid mobile applications has increased rapidly in the last decade. Considering the diversity in how big companies starts to invest in frameworks that supports hybrid application development (cross-platform framework), the necessity of contemporary studies in this subject increase. Facebook and Google are two well-known companies that have developed React-Native and Flutter, respectively. These cross-platform frameworks are continuously developing, and differences occur in their technologies which makes new studies even more appropriate. The purpose of this study is to investigate which of these two frameworks contribute the most for the developer’s productivity considering the lack of studies in this specific subject. Specifically, a case study has been conducted where the research questions were answered.     The two research questions were divided into three sub questions, respectively where each question was given criteria to follow in the case study and each framework were assigned points if the associated criterion for each question were met. In the end of the study a mean value was assigned to each framework. The results showed that there are small differences in terms of its contribution for the developer’s productivity.