Week 13 Assignment: Choosing a Mobile Stack

 

Choosing a Development Stack for our pre-flight planning app for amateur pilots has been tough. We want to reach Android and iOS users, as developing for only one or another leaves out quite a few pilots who would be interested in using our app. The choices for doing this involve developing two separate Native apps, which will be time-consuming and use more of our budget,  or using a Cross-Platform stack, which would be faster and more economical, but would limit features and have potential reliability issues.

Our original thought was that we would use a cross-platform stack in order to keep our costs low and get the product to market faster, but we realized that our product needs to have a high degree of trustability, or it will be quickly abandoned by pilots. While cross-platform stacks can save considerable time and money, they are also prone to performance issues. Due to the nature of our apps, it absolutely needs to have a high degree of trustability and therefore it is imperative that the app is stable and reliable. Otherwise, pilots will not use it.  Therefore, we have decided to build Native apps using an i0S development stack, and an Android Development stack respectively.

Despite the higher cost and added development time, we believe that is most important that the app is stable, consistent, and reliable. We will also be able to offer a seamless, richer, and more immersive user experience than if we went with a cross-platform stack.  We have decided that we will charge a one-time fee of $10 for the app after a free one month trial. We are confident that after using the app, pilots will find the app indispensable and will see it as a small price to pay for the convenience and time-saving it will provide. This will help offset the cost of Native App development.

Globally, Android has the majority of the market share, with 76% of mobile users worldwide using an Android device. However, here in North America, iPhone users take up roughly 54% of the market share, which is why we will develop the app using an iOS development stack first. We definitely do not want pilots using Android phones to be left out, so we will co-currently be working on developing and delivering a beta version of our Android app soon after our iOS app has been launched.