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Scenario:

Our company wants to develop a mobile application.

Our customers use a web application, which for the most part is hosted at their own servers.

This mobile application will be shipped at the same time as our web application, to make sure that they are compatible with each other at all times without careful mainteanance.

Thus i have to ensure that mobile applications can be distributed in a versioned manner (which is not that easy on every platform).

My question: Is it possible to build, host and distribute(install) mobile applications for windows phone, ios and android?

Research results so far:

1 VERSIONED INSTALL

  • Windows phone : probably*
  • IOS : probably*
  • Android : yes*

Notes:

  • IOS: Possible from special app store (along the lines of this)? Either they get build products from us and deploy it in their version of the store or we host it for them.
  • WP: I GUESS similar option to ios?
  • Android: Allow unsafe sources + install url. (see this)

2 BUILD:

  • Windows phone : probably
  • IOS : probably
  • Android : probably

Notes:

  • I'm guessing here, since i didn't start a trial yet, but i suppose depending on platform i can execute a build and receive executables (exe, apk, whateveriosextensionis) which can then be distributed

3 VERSIONED HOSTING

  • Windows phone : yes*
  • IOS : yes*
  • Android : yes*

Notes:

  • WP: According to this and this - possible
  • IOS: According to this - possible
  • Android: Host version at url of choice - should be simple enough? (like this link indicates)

Is my research on this topic correct? Does anyone have experience with the subject and would be kind enough to confirm? Right now my conclusion would be that it looks like it is possible for all 3 platforms.

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Dbl
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  • Regarding iOS, if your app was an in-house enterprise app, then MDM is surely the way to go, but as a third-party app and trying to place customer's iOS devices under your management (MDM) is bound for failure (IMHO)... For a commercial app like yours we threw MDM out the window as soon as we looked at the support nightmare iOS was for 3rd party based MDM, the lack of security in Android via app installing from insecure sources, etc.. We distrubute via the std device's app store and enforce token based logins, ssl only endpoints, etc... things that you should be doing anyway. – SushiHangover Sep 29 '15 at 16:55
  • @RobertN what's the meaning of the abbrevation MDM? Using the standard device app store is not an option. The mobile app obtains its functionalitiy only in combination with the version of the web application it has been developed with. The web application they use, connect to inhouse databases for their installation. If a user updated their mobile version they would be unable to connect to the web application at the same time as being able to roll back to a version which was compatible. hence versioned distribution is required. – Dbl Sep 29 '15 at 17:06
  • MDM = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_device_management – SushiHangover Sep 29 '15 at 17:45
  • There are lots of apps that handle versioned dist. in the various app stores, not ideal but companies do it. If you are versioning at the app level and not at your web/mobile api level you probabilty have bigger issues. Also you might want to just look at placing a mobile web version of your current web app into a native mobile app container thus removing the version dependency but still retaining access to all the device's native features. – SushiHangover Sep 29 '15 at 17:59
  • @RobertN "you probabilty have bigger issues" i do. plenty actually. the issue goes way beyond simple refactoring to an api friendly structure. We've all had "features, features, features!"-oriented bosses i guess. also that web application is a webforms+mvc5 frankenstein. just wrapping it into a mobile app container is unlikely to happen within the next 2 years :p but thanks for the suggestion – Dbl Sep 29 '15 at 22:13
  • Bummer... I work as a contractor so I know all about the features, features, features mindset as I been employed a number of times to clean up after that :-/ Hopefully you can use the mobile work to start building new apis that can used to replace and/or complement the existing frankenstein ;-) Good luck. – SushiHangover Sep 30 '15 at 00:02
  • @RobertN Yeah. I've only had those so far, my current one does accept improvements as long as they're done within a certain timeframe, which is nice. but fixing everything up to provide a clean api would consume more time. i'm glad we've even migrated to using mvc because of me. otherwise we'd still be working with pos webforms only :) Thank you for your contribution – Dbl Sep 30 '15 at 09:26

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