mrc's Cup of Joe Blog

Join us in exploring the world of modern development, evolving technologies, and the art of future-proof software

How much does native mobile app development cost?

Save MoneyCost is one of the reasons we advise businesses against building native mobile apps. Of course, there are many more reasons we advise against native apps, but I won’t get into them in this article. You can always read this white paper if you’d like to learn more.

Today, I’m focusing on native app cost. Simply put, native apps are significantly more expensive to both develop and maintain than hybrid or mobile web apps.

So, how much do they cost? I did a little digging and found a wide range of cost estimates, some of which may surprise you. I’ve listed four of these cost estimates below:

Forrester Research estimates the cost of a single enterprise iPhone app at $20,000 – $150,000. Of course, that range accounts for many factors, such as app complexity. For instance, a simple informational app will cost much less than a heavy duty app connected to a back-end database.

What about tablet apps? Native tablet apps are even more expensive, as one mobile app development company estimated the cost of a single enterprise iPad app anywhere between $50,000 – $150,000.

It’s important to understand that those prices only apply to development. We haven’t even touched on ongoing maintenance costs, which according to this article, typically come in at 15% – 20% of original development cost, per application.

Now, keep in mind that all of these figures apply to building a single native app. Since each native app only runs on one platform, you must develop multiple native apps to reach additional platforms…which exponentially increases the development price.

Wrap up

High cost is one major reason we advise against building native apps for your business. If your company is considering mobile apps, I recommend investigating the mobile web app or hybrid app options. Not only are they cheaper to build, they’re also easier to maintain. Those are benefits that any business will appreciate.

Of course, if you are considering mobile business apps, we can help. The video below explains how our development platform (m-Power) simplifies mobile development and automatically creates cross-platform smartphone and tablet apps every time you build an application.

If you’d like to build a mobile web app with m-Power today, sign up for a free m-Power Trial. The onscreen tour will guide you through the process of building a web (and mobile web) app without programming. Click here to get started.

4 thoughts on “How much does native mobile app development cost?”

  1. Great blog having useful information. Thanks for sharing this content. Technology is growing in all fields.
    iphone application development services

  2. mobile app development

    A few years ago the scenario was different where just for checking emails and accessing sites one had to use a computer but now, the scene has changed completely because computing is done easily in mobile phones. Now you can access the whole gamut of the universe at your fingertips thanks to the mobile app development company in India.

  3. Prakash Kumar

    It depends on the requirements of the client. If you are to develop a native mobile app then you would have to approach the correct mobile app development company to find out the details. Anyways thanks for the article. I hope it would prove very useful to any clients reading this.

Comments are closed.