Evaluation of cross-platform tools for mobile development

Abstract: Cross-platform mobile development is a new area of software engineering that allows the companies to reduce development time and cost. The paper surveys major crossplatform mobile development tools available on the market, develops a framework for guided choice of such tools, and applies this framework to an actual decision problem from within an authentic industrial case. The paper’s main result is a framework for choosing cross-platform development tools, for a specific engineering context. The framework consists of four evaluation stages and a taxonomy with seven evaluation parameters: tool’s type, deployment mode, license, compatibility, mobile platforms, documentation, popularity. The case considered, is a large IT solution provider serving a range of manufacturers, design units, and sales organizations within the Automotive sector. Our conclusions are that, for this case, the most suitable tools were PhoneGap, RhoMobile, Appcelerator Titanium, Sencha Touch or Xamarin, with RhoMobile as the recommended choice. Availability of the framework improves the quality of decision making in IT solution providers, and thus the qualities and costs of their solutions.