As the mobile application development is continue to expand, its becoming a challenging job to publish your apps. for all major mobile platforms. At this point you have to choose some mobile platforms and to leave some of them from your plans. In this situation cross platform mobile apps. development frameworks could help you, the idea is to write once and run anywhere without learning five or six major SDKs. Though they are not the perfect answer to all of your needs, but still they are pretty good to manage a big share of your requirements.
Here are four mostly used cross-platform development frameworks which are used to deliver “write once and run anywhere” experience to the developers.
PhoneGap
PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores.
Language : HTML, Javascript
Platforms : iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm WebOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile support
Device capability support : Geo Location , Vibration, Accelerometer, Sound (play & record), Camera, File system IO, and Gesture / Multitouch.
Open Source License : MIT
Free : YES
Community size todate : Messages= 18361, Users= 4696
IDE : Eclipse-based environment
Distribution format : Native distribution format of each platform
Rhodes
Rhomobile’s free and open source mobile application framework Rhodes lets you quickly build native mobile applications for all major smartphones. These are true native device applications (not mobile web apps)
Language : HTML, Javascript, Ruby
Platforms : iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian and Android
Device capability support : Geo Location, PIM contacts and calendar, camera, native mapping, push, barcode, signature capture, and Bluetooth.
Open Source License : MIT, but commercial license is also available for enterprise grade support.
Free : YES
Community size todate : Messages= 11547, Users = 972
IDE : Any IDE that supports Ruby. Eclipse can also be used with Ruby plugin.
Distribution format : Ruby with HTML interface features compiled through an interpreter into native applications.
Appcelerator Titanium
A free and open source application development platform, Titanium lets you create native mobile, tablet and desktop application experiences using existing web skills like Javascript, HTML, CSS, Python, Ruby, and PHP.
Language : HTML, Javascript
Platforms : iPhone, Android
Device capability support : Geo Location, Vibration support, Accelerometer support, Sound (play/record) support, Camera support,File system IO support, Gesture / Multitouch support and Contacts.
Open Source License : Apache Public License v2, Proprietary
Free : YES
Community size todate : Messages: 11917, Users = 1.5 Million
IDE : Titanium Developer
Distribution format : Native distribution format of each platform
MoSync
MoSync is a Software Development Kit which allows you to develop applications for all the major mobile platforms using a single environment and C/C++ code base on Windows or OS X.
Language : C/C++
Platforms : iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, JavaME and Moblin platforms. (Blackberry and Windows Phone 7 support is coming shortly).
Device capability support : Geo Location, PIM, Camera access(comming soon), Basic audio,Stylus/touch input,Vibration and Bluetooth (except iPhone).
License : GPL v2 (plus commercial edition)
Free : NO (if you don’t publish your source code), YES (If you publish your source code)
Community size todate : Messages: 2908, Users: 12706
IDE : Eclipse-based environment
Distribution format : SIS, CAB, JAD, JAR, APK, OTA deployment
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