There are three main types of mobile applications: web, native, and hybrid. Once, native was the preferred approach for mobile development, but web technology is advancing at a rapid rate and, in many situations, it can be argued to be there is actually a better choice than native. Flexibility is a key benefit of mobile web; one code base is all that is needed for an app to run across different devices and platforms. In the native world, the same mobile application that runs on iOS, Android, and Windows platforms requires three separate development teams. These developers would need to write the code in Objective-C for iOS, in Java for Android, and in .NET for Windows.

In Chapter 7, Developing Hybrid ArcGIS Mobile Applications with PhoneGap we will discuss hybrid apps. These are mobile web applications that can be converted, using technologies such as Cordova/PhoneGap, into installable apps that more closely resemble their native counterparts, again demonstrating the flexibility of mobile web development.