Using open vs. proprietary standards when developing applications for mobile devices

Abstract

This thesis discusses the possibilities and limitations when developing mobile ap- plications natively vs. HTML5. Research has been carried out to understand how mobile devices can be utilized to its fullest when running applications, and a native iPad application was developed to help in discovering unforeseen challenges. It was developed with a client-server architecture to decrease the amount of work it would take to implement the application natively as a client for all the different mobile platforms.The native approach combined with the client-server architecture is not cross platform by nature, but the study shows that its benefits outweighs the limitations in many cases. It is also shown that time- and cost of the development of an appli- cation favours the HTML5 approach. HTML5 was concluded to be a solution that solves the cross platform problem, but it lacks both performance and API access. However, the type of application developed should be the deciding factor of what solution to choose.