Enterprise Mobility : Analogy among Popular Cross Platform Application Development Tools

Abstract

Mobile computing in the enterprise is still relatively immature, primarily due to the complexity of the
applications that support mobility. Up to now, the development of these applications has traditionally spanned
operating systems, devices, and any number of development frameworks. The vendors in each of these categories
have had distinct approaches to mobile application development that reflect their core competencies. Yet, as is often
the case with technologies that are rapidly maturing, some of these approaches are on the verge of becoming
obsolete. Due to the rise of mobile application development platforms (MADPs) in the enterprise, it is becoming much
simpler to develop mobile applications that can run on almost any platform. In this paper, we present an elaborate
comparison of several popular cross-platform mobile application development tools, namely, Xamarin,
PhoneGap/ApacheCordova, Appcelerator Titanium, Kony and Corona. We provide a pragmatic comparison from
different perspectives like ease and cost of development including programming language and tool support, endproduct capability and performance and community support. This comparison aims to support mobile application
vendors from a large scale, from freelancers to enterprise development teams, when making a choice with respect to
their specific requirements and constraints.