To Get the Most Out of Your Apps - Should You Go Native?

If you’re like nearly every other professional in the workforce, you have some sort of mobility worked into your day. Even if you spend most of your day at your desk, you’re still relying on your smartphone or tablet during the commute, on your lunch break or even in the evening hours. The point is, we as a society have embraced mobile technology and the opportunities to expand its use continue to grow.

The arrival of the iPhone set a new tone and pace for the industry. While the majority of professional users relied on the BlackBerry, the iPhone ushered in the age of the app, a new way of staying connected, informed and entertained. It wasn’t long before Apple’s App Store hit one million downloads and BlackBerry found itself struggling for share of the professional market.

The iPad only made matters worse for BlackBerry as companies and government entities recognized the potential in that kind of mobility. Gone were notepads and planners, replaced with a device that could not only capture information, but send it to the proper folder for storage and reporting entity for recording. Professionals in the field only needed to keep track of one device and activities were streamlined across the organization.

This streamlined efficiency, however, relies on the proper implementation and use of applications. During the market’s infancy, native apps always performed better on devices. Regardless of the manufacturer, the apps developed on Android performed better on Android devices. The same was true for iOS on Apple devices. Consumer demand forced developers to provide comparable solutions across platforms, but performance wasn’t always the same.

Browser-based applications then found a new calling – meeting the needs of the user across any device, accessible from any browser. The idea was to completely streamline operations, ensuring the eradication of problems for users who had to work across multiple platforms. As expected, performance still couldn’t match that of the native app, but things are improving.

For MyPlanet, the recommendation is still the native app if you want true quality performance to match that of other applications on the device. But as the browser option continues to improve, so does the availability of greater capability without boundaries. To explore this further, MyPlanet sat down with Erik Linask in the TMC newsroom at ITEXPO.

To get the full scoop of how best to make apps perform in your environment and the latest from MyPlanet, check out this ITEXPO video in full.