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Was just wondering if there were any cross platform development platforms which would run great for corporate type apps on various mobile devices.

Would be ideal if the language was C# but feel free to suggest others.

meds
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    But promise me one thing: rewrite the user interface **completely** for each platform. –  Mar 07 '11 at 02:20
  • Now you can do it in windows using ***xamarin*** and even ***iOS debug,development and deployment*** can be done in windows without the help of Apple system using ***Xamarin Live Player*** but as far as signing and releasing the app to appstore is concerned Apple system is required – Durai Amuthan.H May 11 '17 at 17:59

7 Answers7

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If you're happy to re-use business logic and write device specific user interfaces (more work, but better user experience on each device) you could consider the various Mono frameworks.

Writing the core business logic as a class library, then writing specific user interfaces using MonoTouch, MonoDroid and Windows using .NET Framework you'll have a cross platform application (albeit with individual UIs) in C#.

Michael Shimmins
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  • Hi Michael, can you recommend an architecture for this sort of thing? Obviously MVVM is out of the question as a pattern as only Wp7 would support that. What about MVP pattern with the view's coded for specific hardware? – Dr. Andrew Burnett-Thompson Jan 06 '12 at 09:11
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Worth noting that you'd be writing once for the PLATFORM, but being certain that your app works on the DEVICES is a different kettle of fish due to the variety of handset providers, their customized platform implementations and the hardware specific to the device.

Check out these related questions... otherwise know as duplicates....

Developing cross platform mobile application

Are there any huge differences between objective-c and Java, or iPhone and Android?

What work has been done on cross-platform mobile development?

Community
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MadMurf
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have you checked out Titanium at http://www.appcelerator.com

And then there is the PhoneGap at http://www.phonegap.com/

abRao
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  • But are those tools any good? That to me is the real question. Because if they are good, then everyone should be using them as much as possible. But my feeling is that few individual developers are going this route. – Fraggle Mar 12 '11 at 13:13
  • Do either of those tools work with wp7? – jjxtra Mar 15 '11 at 22:00
  • PhoneGap supports Windows Phone . Here are some articles on Getting started on WP and PhoneGap http://windowsphonerocks.com/category/developerarticles/phonegap/ . Not sure if Titanium or Sencha Touch Supports WP7 for now... – Senthil Kumar B Jun 10 '12 at 16:36
  • It works, but you may find that you will end up frustrated with it. You don't always produce a quality app or rather you are at the mercy of things you don't control... – DevTheo Nov 13 '12 at 19:59
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Titanium Mobile is a popular choice these days.

I strongly doubt that you'll find a C# option* that's cross-platform since C# is tied to the Microsoft stack.

You could also just write a mobile-centric webapp with jQuery Mobile or similar.

*For mobile. For desktop, there's Mono (whose site appears to be down right now).

Matt Ball
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  • this is interesting. could you tell (us) a little more about titanium and what it does? – Darkhydro Mar 07 '11 at 02:20
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    C# isn't tied to Microsoft. Mono (as you mentioned) provides a C# runtime for multiple platforms. It isn't just for desktop either, MonoTouch is a native framework for iOS devices using C# and MonoDroid exists for for Android devices. – Michael Shimmins Mar 07 '11 at 02:34
  • @Michael: thanks, I tend to forget about MonoTouch, since I'm really not a C# dev. – Matt Ball Mar 07 '11 at 04:16
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well if you've got a mac, your best bet would be to go for phonegap which supports a wide range of platforms,

if not, you could go for titanium

JqueryToAddNumbers
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1

Although there are many platforms that provide you the facility to write once and run on multiple platform but from my point of view its not a great idea for simple reason of performance just think of below example

A C code is far faster than a java code because java provides you the virtual machine to run that code and java is far more easier to write than that of C. The idea is the more you stick close to native API the more you will get performance.

So considering the above example just think what will be the performance of such application that is supported on so many platforms

Note: I have not worked on any of such platforms so I might be wrong but this just a simple conception that fits to all

ingsaurabh
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  • "A C code is far faster than a java code because java provides you the virtual machine to run" -- This is not true. Look at any modern benchmarks and in many cases the JIT compiler in the JVM gets performance to almost on par with native compiled. This a myth and relic from 1996. – Scott Mar 11 '11 at 20:17
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If you are used to working with Visual Studio, you can try Teleric's http://www.icenium.com/ . Icenium does not support Windows Mobile 6 though

Darius V
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