Multi-platform strategies, approaches and challenges for developing mobile applications

Developing applications for mobile platforms is challenging because of multiple proprietary environments. Abundant material has been published discussing three kinds of mobile app development-Native, Web, and Hybrid, where Hybrid apps are preferred due to their usability. In this paper we discuss a strategy and approach for developing and delivering existing Web and Desktop applications as mobile apps. This proposal is a variant of Hybrid development model that utilizes code translators to translate existing Web or Desktop applications for the target mobile platforms. Our goal is to validate if investments made by an enterprise in developing Web or Desktop applications are still relevant when the same are to be re-deployed as mobile apps. © 2014 IEEE.