15 Coolest Mobile App Development Platforms: 2019 Mobility 100
We round up the top vendors focused on offering innovative platforms for the development of business mobile apps.
App Development Platform Innovators
To successfully pull off mobile application projects, businesses of all sizes are looking for every advantage they can get. In particular, companies are looking for faster, lower-cost methods for developing the mobile apps that are increasingly becoming mission-critical to their businesses. Methods for rapid development of apps—including low-code and no-code methods—are a growing focus in 2019, as is the ability to use a single development across both native mobile apps and web apps.
To give a sense of the key players offering mobile app development platforms right now, we've rounded up 15 of the coolest vendors to know about.
Adobe
Top Executive: Shantanu Narayen, CEO
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
Adobe's Experience Manager Mobile offering can be used to quickly produce apps that leverage media assets and new content, as well as connect to third-party APIs and key business systems. Main features include the ability to repurpose existing content from digital assets and content management systems in the production of new mobile apps.
Amazon
Top Executive: Jeff Bezos, CEO
Headquarters: Seattle
Amazon Web Services’ offerings for mobile app development include AWS Amplify, a framework and toolset for writing modern apps across all major platforms, including iOS, Android and web. AWS Amplify enables creation, configuration and implementation of scalable AWS-powered apps, including through a simplified framework for integrating back ends.
Appian
Top Executive: Matt Calkins, CEO
Headquarters: Reston, Va.
Appian offers a low-code platform that makes it possible to build enterprise apps up to 20X faster than using other methods, according to the company. Appian offers drag-and-drop design for visual development of apps, and provides intelligent automation for related business processes to avoid the need for creating custom code.
Kony
Top Executive: Thomas Hogan, CEO
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
Kony, a longtime mobile app development platform player, in March relaunched its low-code app development platform as Kony Quantum—with a number of enhanced capabilities. Key features of Kony Quantum include a visual design and development canvas; a library of prebuilt microapps, component UI elements, templates and data connectors; an editor for business logic and workflow; capabilities for visual data integration; and the ability to use a unified development approach across both native mobile apps and web apps.
Mendix, a Siemens Business
Top Executive: Derek Roos, CEO
Headquarters: Boston
Mendix's platform focuses on no-code/low-code application development, using the company's model-driven visual development tools. Mendix enables app creators to build objects, attributes and data models with a UML-based data modeler, while using a WYSIWYG graphical page designer to build mobile and web user interfaces that are fully responsive.
MobileFrame
Top Executive: Lonny Oswalt, CEO
Headquarters: Los Gatos, Calif.
MobileFrame's platform focuses on drag-and-drop methods for creating mobile apps and uses native runtime app containers. MobileFrame offers the ability to use no-code development not just for front-end work, but also for back-end API creation and data binding.
Oracle
Top Executive: Mark Hurd and Safra Catz, Co-CEOs
Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.
Oracle's solutions for simplified app development include the Mobile Hub platform, focused on quickly building, deploying and managing apps that connect to Oracle ERP, HCM or CX—as well as to third-party systems that are on-premises or cloud-based. Oracle also offers Visual Builder, a visual development environment for rapidly creating mobile and web apps.
OutSystems
Top Executive: Paulo Rosado, CEO
Headquarters: Boston
OutSystems focuses on high-productivity development across web, mobile, email, SMS and chat. The company's platform offers a visual modeling approach to developing a user interface, as well as data synchronization, logic and back-end integration. The visual models can be expanded upon using CSS, JavaScript and a number of other languages.
Pegasystems
Top Executive: Alan Trefler, CEO
Headquarters: Cambridge, Mass.
Pegasystems' solutions for mobile app development include Pega Mobile Client, which allows any Pega application to be deployed as a stand-alone app for iOS or Android devices as well as for Windows 10 tablets. Meanwhile, Pega Mobile Mashup enables Pega business processes to be embedded within existing apps, eliminating the need to rewrite existing code.
Progress Software
Top Executive: Yogesh Gupta, CEO
Headquarters: Bedford, Mass.
NativeScript 5.0 is Progress' latest version of its open-source framework for building native mobile apps with Angular, Vue.js, TypeScript and JavaScript. Key additions in NativeScript 5.0 include NativeScript Schematics (which enables the building of both web and mobile apps from a single project); "Instant Start" CLI workflow (allowing work on native apps to begin quickly, with no need to install iOS and Android SDKs); and Hot Module Replacement (for faster development with instantaneous app updates).
Red Hat
Top Executive: James Whitehurst, CEO
Headquarters: Raleigh, N.C.
Red Hat's mobile app development tools include functionality in OpenShift, the company's hybrid Platform-as-a-Service offering for cloud-based development, hosting and delivery of apps—along with OpenShift Application Runtimes, which consists of runtimes that are cloud-native and can be used for native development of apps on OpenShift.
Salesforce
Top Executive: Marc Benioff and Keith Block, Co-CEOs
Headquarters: San Francisco
Salesforce focuses on the development of mobile and web apps using its Lightning Platform, which can use JavaScript- and XML-built components. Salesforce provides developers with Salesforce Mobile SDKs and with access to JavaScript frameworks for building apps to run across platforms.
SAP
Top Executive: Bill McDermott, CEO
Headquarters: Germany
SAP's mobile app development solutions include SAP Cloud Platform Mobile Services—which consist of tools for developing, configuring and managing apps—along with SAP Cloud Platform SDKs for iOS and Android, which offer rapid development of native apps.
ServiceNow
Top Executive: John Donahoe, CEO
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
ServiceNow's application development platform, the Now Platform App Engine, uses standard tools and languages such as JavaScript and Angular to enable quick app building, while also offering the ability to extend ServiceNow apps with the help of a shared set of code.
Zoho
Top Executive: Sridhar Vembu, CEO
Headquarters: Pleasanton, Calif.
Zoho's low-code mobile app building solution, Zoho Creator, enables rapid creation of apps using drag-and-drop functionality and guided scripting. Zoho Creator also offers plenty of options for customization, such as allowing app builders to customize the layouts and themes of their apps.