Mobile applications are no longer a choice but a necessity for enterprises. However, the real challenge is in deciding on native vs. cross-platform apps. With both having their own advantages and limitations, choosing the best option is always challenging.

However, according to several reports, 80 percent of enterprises are focusing on developing applications supporting multiple platforms like iOS, Android, and Windows, because cross-platform apps are easy to use and cost-effective.

Well, this brings us to the main crux of this article: why use Xamarin for hybrid app development?

This article will help you understand why Xamarin is widely preferred by enterprises for developing hybrid applications.

Before we dive into Xamarin, though, let’s understand why you may choose cross-platform apps instead of native apps. Some of the major reasons to use Xamarin for cross-platform over native applications are:

• It's an open source platform.
• Cross-platform can still provide a native-like user experience.
• Reuse of the same API.
• Shared app logic.
• Advantages of C#.

What Xamarin Brings to the Table

It's Simple and Convenient

• The development process timeline with Xamarin is relatively short. It offers a comparatively simplified way of sharing code across multiple mobile platforms and thereby takes less time to build an app.
• Apps built with Xamarin provide a better experience to the users because of the standardized UI controls. You don’t have to develop any extra plug-ins thanks to the standardized UI controls.
• Thanks to the integration of the SDK, Xamarin makes it highly easy to add new features and auto updates the different versions of the app the moment the changes are effected in the OS.
• Xamarin uses C# and the .NET framework — a proven, reliable developing environment — for all mobile platforms.
• Anything that can be achieved with Objective-C, Swift, or Java, a developer can do in C# using Xamarin. You can integrate native open-source libraries available for iOS and Android with Xamarin.
• A lot of existing open-source and in-house source code projects can be reused in Xamarin.iOS or Xamarin.Android projects thanks to the C# and .NET framework combination.
• Normally, the process of testing a cross-platform app can be long and tedious. However, the Xamarin TestCloud allows the testing of applications on the cloud, making the process to be simpler, shorter, and faster.

Flexibility

• Xamarin is primarily built on open-source technologies offering you the flexibility to choose components according to your requirements.
• Xamarin's component store is a great value-add that provides several resources for developers, including cross-platform libraries, UI controls, and third-party web services.

Performance

Xamarin has two main approaches to performance: a shared UI a separate UI. In a shared UI, nearly all the code is shared in all the platforms.

In a separate UI, only business logic is shared, and you have to make separate user interfaces for all the platforms. Both approaches are equally popular.

• Xamarin’s performance is close to native. Apps built on Xamarin.Android or Xamarin.iOS mirror native apps as the development is focused on sharing business logic rather than a codebase.
• The cross-platform app development capabilities use native UI controls and leverage platform-specific hardware acceleration, which enables close-to-native performance (which cannot be achieved with solutions that interpret code at runtime).
• Even when a developer goes for the Xamarin.Forms approach that is focused on broad code sharing with less platform-specific behaviour, the majority of the source code can be reused with Xamarin.Forms.
• By virtue of using shared code, Xamarin leaves fewer bugs to deal with. With Xamarin TestCloud, developers can test apps with fragmentation, CI, and object-based UI testing.
• Developers can also test the health of the app using Xamarin Insights, which is a real-time app monitoring module.

Availability

• If offline usability is a key differentiator for your app, thanks to the fact that Xamarin is backed by the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, it offers reliable cloud-based data synchronization, allows you to use the app even when not you're connected to the internet.
• Thanks to the integration with Azure, you can expect unhindered network connectivity that ensures continuous app performance and reduces performance lags – things that are crucial to success.

Scalability

• As Xamarin is a Microsoft-driven product, by default, Visual Studio becomes your environment to develop, build, and debug apps. Visual Studio contains a code editing environment and a simulator to try the app that you develop.
• Mobile app developers can use the VS App Center to test the applications on various devices in the cloud. This offers you the flexibility to test different/new features offline even while the app is being used in the market.
• With Xamarin, your app is future-ready, as it works with some of the latest SDKs and utilizes common and platform-specific APIs.
• Xamarin tightly binds the SDKs and the APIs of multiple platforms which enables developing high-quality applications as well as providing support for new features as soon as they are plugged into the operating system.

Support

• By virtue of using shared code, Xamarin leaves fewer bugs to deal with. With Xamarin TestCloud, developers can test apps with fragmentation, CI, and object-based UI testing.
• Developers can also test the health of the app using Xamarin Insights, which is a real-time app monitoring module.
• Xamarin comes with deep integration with Azure Cloud, and hence comes with a robust app development environment and helps developers create rich mobile apps.
• The Azure cloud provides the benefits of scalability, on-demand resources, high-availability, and cost-effectiveness along with the added benefit of high support.

Security

• Using Xamarin and Azure, you can be assured of the app and data security. As the connections between different app components are hosted on the Azure cloud and are encrypted, your app is secure.
• The secure connection between your app and the backend Azure comes with HTTP certificates and 24-hour threat management protection against malware.
• By leveraging the authentication services provided by Azure developers can also securely integrate social media logins with the backend.