ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING KOTLIN MULTIPLATFORM MOBILE TECHNOLOGY FOR CREATING CROSS-PLATFORM APPLICATIONS

Igor Olenych, R. Korostenskyi

Abstract


Given the popularity of various mobile applications, the search for ways to improve the efficiency and productivity of their development is an actual task. One possible approach to mobile application development is based on cross-platform solutions that adapt the software to multiple operating systems (OS). A multi-platform approach optimizes software development processes on one code base that significantly increases their efficiency. In particular, Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM) technology makes it possible to implement cross-platform projects by providing code sharing between Android and iOS while maintaining the flexibility and advantages of native programming.

The Android and iOS versions of three applications with different structural and functional complexity have been implemented to study the effectiveness of using the KMM technology in the process of developing cross-platform mobile applications. The main features of transferring business logic into a shared KMM module are determined on the basis of the analysis of the code base volume and the build time of software components. A decrease in the total volume of the code base of Android and iOS versions of mobile applications was revealed by 19–28%, depending on their structural complexity. In addition, an approximately 7–23% increase in the build time of mobile applications due to the use of shared KMM modules was found. It has been established that the build time of the shared KMM modules of the developed mobile applications on the iOS platform was longer than on the Android platform due to the use of additional tools for the compilation. No changes were found in the performance of the developed applications, namely their functionality, speed, stability, and reliability when using shared KMM modules. Therefore, the KMM technology provides an increase in the efficiency of the process of developing cross-platform mobile applications.

Key words:  mobile application, cross-platform development, software structure.


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30970/eli.21.3

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