If you are a business guy with no technological bent of mind, then this post is for you. Read on.
You need a mobile app for your business or your product and when you go in the market looking for a company or a developer, you will come across lot of posts which say native is better or hybrid is the way to go. My advice? Ignore these and ask the right questions to the developer.
Your end user does not need to know the technicalities of the mobile app nor do you. You should only be concerned whether your application is fast or not and it works or not or it fulfils your requirements or not. Rest of the technology mumbo jumbo is irrelevant.
Well there is one point which will definitely impact you. The cost. Native is expensive to develop and maintain where as hybrid app is cheaper to develop and maintain. Concern your self with this point only. Use native development when you have a functionality in your app which will change something in the phone’s settings like brightness or contrast or change the screensaver or background. Hybrid apps cannot do these as they run in a sand box and don’t have access to the system preferences due to security (although they can if there is a plugin for the functionality). So, choose based on the requirement. Also, if your app is targeted to old phones, then native will help. Android has bad performance below version 3. If you are targeting versions below 3 for android, choose native. For rest hybrid is the way to go.
In short, hybrid app will suffice 95% of your requirement. Feel free to drop me an email if you have more questions. Visit my website www.gaurav.mobi