This is becoming more and more of a critical decision when looking to develop for the mobile marketplace.  For those of you who don’t know, a native app can be downloaded from a smart phone store such as iTunes, while a mobile web app has to be accessed through the mobile web browser and then bookmarked for quick access.

The question of should you develop your mobile application as a mobile friendly website or a standard native application is really very complicated to hash through in a single blog post, so those of you who are really interested to know please call me.

There are however several factors that I normally see in this decision making process:

Reasons to go for a Mobile Web App:

• Internal application for employee and customer login.
• Does not require an app icon sitting on a smart phone.
• Does not want the app available for general download on iTunes or other stores.
• Large, enterprise wide app that requires many data feeds.
• Large quantity of videos, PDF’s or other data.
• Easier to develop and optimize for all platforms.

Reasons to go for a Native Application:

• Selling the application for a fee.
• Need to “brand” your icon by having it on the smart phone screen.
• Smaller files sizes, native app will work faster if running from the smart phone.
• Need to notify user base of updates.
• Native use of the internal GPS or accelerometer.

There are many more pro’s and con’s to cover, these are just a few when considering which direction to go.  Give us a call at 888.856.2664 to discuss which option might work best for you.