What makes Flutter a better choice for startups and SMEs?
Despite being a recently developed platform, Flutter is becoming everyone’s favorite. More than 40% of the app developers prefer Flutter for building cross-platform applications. On GitHub, the Flutter platform has grabbed 138k starts.
Not only startups and SMEs, even the big tech giants like Google Ads, Alibaba, Reflectly, and Coach Yourself are making it big with Flutter. The Flutter app development trends have started creating a huge impact on many industries and business organizations.
Let’s find out why everyone is mesmerized by the Flutter charm and what makes it the comprehensive solution for cross-platform app development challenges.
But before that let’s have a look into some of the global stats about Flutter.
The global statistics revealing the future of cross-platform app development
- 2021 developers survey- Statista
Based on the survey 42% of the software developers use flutter and on the whole 33% of mobile developers use cross-platform technologies or frameworks while the rest of the mobile developers use native tools.
- Stack overflow trends
Since the introduction of Flutter in the app developers ecosystem in 2018, just in two years, the platform gained nearly 47% growth as shown in the stats below. Moreover, organizations wishing to expand their business are looking forward to Flutter as the powerful cross-platform technology.
- Flutter developers- Google breakdown
Google has broken down the share of Flutter developers as,
- 35% works for startups
- 26% are enterprise developers
- 19% are self-employed
- 7% works for design agencies
Flutter users according to the platform are,
- 60% Windows app developers
- 27% macOS
- 13% Linux
Moreover, it is widely used in India, China, the US, the EU, and Brazil.
Key reasons why Flutter is becoming a favorite among startups, SMEs, and large enterprises
Flutter is a software development kit developed by Google that enables developers to build cross-platform apps. Here are the key reasons why the platform is becoming a favorite among all types of businesses.
- Simplify Cross-platform app development
Flutter is an open-source UI kit that allows developers to build super-fast cross-platform applications. With Flutter, developers can build applications for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, Google Fuchsia, and web from a single codebase.
Google has two mobile app SDKs, Android and Flutter. Flutter app runs on Android, iOS, and other platforms but it doesn’t directly compile the code to native language, instead it runs on the Flutter rendering engine and Flutter framework. Then the Flutter SDK generates a package that directly runs on each platform.
ping a native application for a different platform is too costly as it requires different developers to script distinct code. Overall, the development time and a number of developers required to build native apps are high as compared to cross-platform app development which uses a single code base.
Flutter uses a single code base for developing an application that functions smoothly on the different platforms. Thus it reduces the app development time, the number of developers required, and the cost of app maintenance for different platforms.
2. Saves development time and cost of app maintenance.
Developing a native application for a different platform is too costly as it requires different developers to script distinct code. Overall, the development time and a number of developers required to build native apps are high as compared to cross-platform app development which uses a single code base.
Flutter uses a single code base for developing an application that functions smoothly on the different platforms. Thus it reduces the app development time, the number of developers required, and the cost of app maintenance for different platforms.
3. Flutter provides its own widgets
Flutter comes with Widgets, these are the basic building blocks of Flutter app UI. Each widget is the immutable declaration of the part of the UI. Widgets follow hierarchical order to be displayed on the screen, each widget nests inside its parent and can receive data from the parent.
With Widgets, developers can easily define UI elements and layouts that follow the Material design of Google and Cupertino of Apple. These widgets are rendered through the Skia (2D graphics library written in C++) that enables developers to build powerful UI irrespective of the platforms.
4. Flutter libraries, tools, packages, and plugins
Flutter libraries, tools, packages, and plugins extend Flutter’s capabilities and speed up the development process. Here are some of the popular Flutter libraries, tools, packages, and plugins:
- Bloc
- Get X
- GetIt
- Flutter Google Map
- FL chart
- URL launcher
- Rx Dart
Flutter Tools:
- Firebase
- RIVE
Flutter packages:
- Image Picker
- Path provider
- Scope model
Flutter plugin:
- Official flutter plugins
- Flutter location
- Skeleton
- Animated switches
- Ripple effect
5. Flutter ensures code quality and app performance with autotests
In-app development, new features are always built on top of the existing codebase. Therefore while testing an application it’s essential to test new features and the existing features as well. But here comes the problem, time spent on testing increases with the addition of new features and if the app is not well tested there are higher chances of bugs in the app.
Automation testing in Flutter simplifies testing by automating some of the testing tasks that were done manually. With autotest, developers can write automation tests for those features which are already treated by the developers. So, it will decrease the time spent on testing new features as the underlying layer of code will get tested automatically.
6. Forever growing Flutter community.
Flutter has grown tremendously since its birth in 2018. Over two million developers have used Flutter and nearly half-million developers are using Flutter every month.
Flutter open-source repository on GitHub has 21.2k forks that show its developer community is growing rapidly.
7. Flutter apps are highly responsive.
Flutter supports developing highly responsive UI that makes it the preferred choice for business apps.
One can follow different approaches for achieving the highly responsive UI in Flutter. Some of these approaches include,
- Using Layout Builder helps to adjust the display based on the size constraints allocated to widgets.
- Media query gives the entire screen size of the app at runtime and device orientation at the time. If any configuration is changed the build method is called to ensure the widget tree is rebuilt.
- Aspect ratio widget sizes the child widget to a specific aspect ratio.
Other than the above approaches, two packages are used by developers to improve the responsiveness of applications-FlutterScreenUtil and Responsive Sizer.
Top companies and startups using Flutter for cross-platform app development in 2022
- ClickUp
Click is the popular project management tool that provides a bunch of integrations and automation to simplify project workflow, organization, and management.
- Tizen
Tizen used Flutter to bring its portable power on multiple screens that include smartwatches, TVs, and other IoT devices.
- Widgetbook
Widgetbook is the custom widget library developed for Flutter applications that enable developers to manage all their widgets in one place and view them on different devices.
- Reflectly
Reflectly is the journaling and mood tracker app that has used Flutter to design exclusive digital experiences for Android and iOS users. The app was built within 2 and half months by just two engineers. According to Reflectly developersFlutter decreases development time by 50% and also provides better UI than other cross-platform technologies.
- Dream 11
Dream 11 has used Flutter to build multi-platform applications, the company supports nearly 50 million fantasy sports users in India.
Summing Up:
All in all, Flutter gives developers everything essential for cross-platform application development. Most of its characteristics such as faster app development, multiplatform capabilities, high performance, and responsiveness make it stand out from the crowd of other cross-platform technologies.
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