Quick Summary:
Flutter’s robust cross-platform development capabilities have made it a popular choice among entrepreneurs who seek to create high-quality applications and meet the demands of the present fast-paced digital landscape. This blog is for decision-makers to explore why use Flutter and how it can help them develop cost-effective, top-tier solutions for mobile app development.
Table of Contents
Why use Flutter?: Flutter Overview
Google initially released Flutter in May 2017, and has experienced exponential growth. It is one of the top repositories with a massive 153K stars on GitHub. The platform has become even more robust and user-friendly with its numerous upgrades.
So, what is Flutter? At its core, Flutter is a free, open-source UI framework that enables developers to create beautiful, natively compiled, multi-platform applications using one programming language and a single codebase. The framework utilizes Dart, an object-oriented programming language that emphasizes front-end development. In addition, Flutter’s support for building web applications offers businesses an alternative to progressive web apps, all while utilizing the same technology for their app development needs.
Flutter key components
Flutter is major categorized into two significant key Components:
Flutter Architecture
Flutter Architecture is the foundation of the Flutter framework consisting of various layers and components that work together to make fast and efficient applications. Understanding Flutter architecture can help business owners make informed decisions about their mobile app development needs, leading to faster development, better performance, and cost savings.
Flutter architecture follows a layered approach consisting of three main layers.
- Embedder (lowest layer)
- Engine
- Framework (highest layer)
Each layer serves a specific purpose in the app development process, from platform-specific support to handling lower-level implementation of the framework.
Let us understand these layers in detail:
Framework Layer: Flutter employs a visible framework layer created using the Dart Programming language. This layer provides developers with a vast array of libraries that can be used to develop and design the user interface. This framework layer is divided into three distinct parts: foundational classes, widgets, and rendering layers.
Engine Layer: It is written in C/C++ and offers a lower implementation of the Flutter framework that includes a layer of graphics, accessibility support, text layout, and other vital APIs. It also interacts with the framework layer to execute the code and generate the user interface.
Embedder Layer: It is a platform-specific embedder for a Flutter app to run on. It assists Flutter running on any Operating System and gives the engine layer a platform-specific interface to interact with the native platform API.
These architectural layers play a crucial role in creating and designing your Flutter applications’ widgets, which are reusable UI components that enhance an application’s functionality and User Interface. Let’s explore how custom widgets and their functionalities can be used to create stunning UI elements that meet the unique needs of any Flutter app.
What are Flutter Widgets?
One of Flutter’s most appealing elements is UI widgets that adhere to important web application design standards. Widgets are fundamental building blocks, consisting of everything visible on the screen. It depends on the arrangement and the types of widgets used in the code that determines the appearance and functionality of the app. The code is structured like a widget tree, each serving as a block to create the custom user interfaces.
These widgets are categorized based on functionality, as shown below.
Categories |
Description |
Accessibility |
Widgets that make Flutter easily accessible |
Animation and Motion |
Widgets that assist with the addition of more animation to other Widgets |
Assets, Images, and Icons |
Widgets are in charge of assets like displaying images and showing icons |
Async |
These widgets enable async functions in the Flutter Apps |
Basics |
These Widgets are substantial for any Flutter app creation |
Cupertino |
These widgets are designed explicitly for iOS |
Input |
Widgets that enable users to provide input functionality in the Flutter Application |
Interaction Models |
Widgets that handle touch interactions and navigate users to different views in the application |
Layout |
These widgets assist in keeping other essential widgets on the screen as and when needed |
Material Component |
Widgets that strictly follow guidelines for Material Design |
Painting and Effects |
These widgets can alter the appearance of child widgets without modifying their layout or shape. |
Scrolling |
Widgets that enable scrolling for non-scrollable widgets |
Styling |
Widgets responsible for the apps theme, size, and responsiveness |
Text |
These widgets are responsible for displaying and styling texts |
Widgets are crucial in ensuring the efficiency of the Flutter framework, as demonstrated by the table above. But why should businesses opt for Flutter over other cross-platform web development tools? The coming section will address your concerns and elaborate on Flutter’s numerous benefits, making it a highly compelling option for businesses to consider.
Why Use Flutter for Enterprise App Development?
Flutter is an excellent choice for enterprise cross-platform app development because it streamlines the mobile development process, supports application development across six platforms, including web, iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, and Linux, and saves time and resources. Hence, Flutter’s versatility and cross-platform applications capabilities make it one of the best ways to answer your question about why use Flutter for app development.
Pros of Flutter App Development
One of the significant benefits of using the Flutter framework is that you can create Android and iOS devices together. Additionally, with Flutter plugins, you can deliver a native feel to your app while your customers can sit back and experience the excellence of native app performance.
But why use Flutter as a key tool in your enterprise mobile app development process? Here are several reasons for the best uses of Flutter.
Increased Time-to-market speed
Launching an app quickly is substantial in the present market to stay ahead of the competition. Being first to market can be a significant advantage over your rivals. All thanks to flutters “Hot Reload “ and the ability to use a common code for iOS and Android apps feature, developers can build apps faster and dedicate less time to platform-specific coding. This results in a faster time to market, giving a competitive edge to launch your app earlier than the rest.
Best Data Security
Flutter is a favored framework for enterprises to manage risk-sensitive information due to its superior data security attributes. It provides multifactor and multiuser authentication and enables storing sensitive data with a feature to clean up the cache upon session expiration. Flutter apps also provide app-level encryption to avoid code injections and offer TLS certificates pinning through the Dart: io library to ensure secure HTTPS connections.
Scalability
Flutters’ widgets-based architecture makes it easy for product owners to handle large amounts of data and adapt to growing backends. With the ability to add new app features, they can quickly respond to changing user and customer needs, making it a powerful tool for scalable application development.
Powerful UI designs
Flutter is a powerful tool with a vast collection of themes to create user-friendly and engaging designs. The flare tool, which is Flutter’s 2D vector animation library, allows you to create complex UI elements and interactive animations quickly.
Additionally, Flutter’s single graphics engine (Skia) ensures that everything will be displayed as planned on each platform, providing stable support and a seamless user experience for every user.
Flutter streamlines application development with extensive libraries, customizable widgets, and layout features, creating engaging UI and widgets tailored to specific business needs. Flutter’s widgets adhere to Material Design for Android and Cupertino for Apple, allowing a single codebase to save time. This versatility makes Flutter widgets an ideal choice for creating apps quickly and efficiently.
Layered Architecture Efficiency
Flutter simplifies development with layered architecture and easy access to documented design patterns. It offers simple and secure networking, including access to web resources. Local storage, SQLite databases, and hardware via library plugins with easy state management, code independence, and RxDart for asynchronous programming.
Also, Flutter allows for background processing, JSON serialization and deserialization, deep linking for push notifications, and SQLite for working with large volumes of structured data. These features help businesses to create complex enterprise applications with seamless functionality, increased productivity, and a better user experience.
Having a solid Flutter developer community benefits both the frameworks ongoing development and product owners looking to create apps with Flutter. The community offers support, expertise, and resources to tap into (libraries, tools, and plugins), making it easier and faster to develop apps with Flutter. Also, extensive support means new features and capabilities are constantly created, improving the app’s overall functionality.
Are looking to hire Flutter app developer for your project.
We Bacancy can offer you the skilled and experienced Flutter developer at your convenience. Contact us and save up to 40% development cost.
Flutter Flow for MVP App Creation
The Flutter team has recently launched a tool for Flutter development that will transform the methods by which companies create prototypes for their software. So what is Flutterflow?
Flutterflow is a new no-code platform developed by the Flutter team that enables users to create functional mobile applications without writing any code. With Flutterflow, users can build beautiful and fully functional minimum viable products (MVPs) using pre-designed widgets that can be added to the app’s interface via a drag-and-drop interface. The collaborative platform allows team members to collaborate and comment on projects, making the process more efficient and streamlined.
Flutter Flow offers a wide range of functionalities, including push notifications, chats, animations, and dark/light mode, making it easy for users to customize and tailor their app’s functionality to meet their needs. The platform is fully integrable with third-party tools like Firebase Content Manager, which enhances its flexibility and customization options.
One of the essential benefits of Flutter flow is that it allows businesses to quickly create simple MVPs that can be used to secure investments before passing them on to the development team for further expansion and functionality. Developers can use Flutterflow to jumpstart projects quickly and conduct excellent product demos.
Thus, Flutterflow is an innovative platform offering a simple and intuitive way to create functional mobile applications without writing code. With its collaborative features, a wide range of functionalities, and integration with third-party tools, Flutterflow is an outstanding choice for businesses and developers who want to build beautiful, fully functional MVPs efficiently and quickly.
Flutter Use Cases
As an entrepreneur, there are numerous use cases where you can capitalize on FLutter’s benefits. Read on for examples of how you can leverage this toolkit to efficiently and effectively create high-quality mobile apps.
Advanced IoT Apps
Flutter can build apps that interact with IoT devices that send and receive data from sensors, wearables, and other devices. With Flutter’s support for third-party plugins and libraries, developers can easily connect their apps to various IoT devices and platforms, allowing them to interact with the physical world in real-time.
Flutter allows developers to take native code to build apps that work simultaneously on Android devices and iOS devices, saving time and effort with a single codebase. Examples of cross-platform native apps built using Flutter include Google Ads and the Alibaba App.
Minimal Viable Product (MVP) Development
To test a new idea or a concept, businesses must develop a minimum viable product quickly and efficiently. Flutter’s rapid software development kit and capabilities make it an ideal solution for building MVPs that can be used to secure investments and determine whether the idea has potential.
Enterprise Solutions
Large enterprises require scalable and versatile software solutions that adapt to their changing needs. Flutter’s versatility makes it an excellent option for creating enterprise-level software solutions that can be customized for specific requirements.
UI Heavy Apps
Flutters’ extensive collection of widgets simplifies the creation of visually appealing and complex user interfaces seamlessly. Flutter also offers an array of customizable widgets that can quickly be composed to create stunning and responsive UIs. that showcase the platform’s capabilities for creating UI-heavy apps.
E-commerce Apps
Flutter’s ability to create high-performing and visually stunning user interfaces makes it a popular choice for developing e-commerce apps, which require such features to stand out in a competitive market.
Additionally, It offers various functionalities, including shopping carts and payment gateways.Flutter programming language has a rich set of widgets, and easy backend operating systems integration further enhances its capabilities for e-commerce application development.
Social Networking Apps
For returning users, social media apps need engaging and interactive user interfaces. Flutter is an excellent tool for developing social media apps that offer such features, with its rich functionalities including profiles, chat, and more.
Its customizable user interface and animation capabilities further enhance social media app development that offers personalized and engaging experiences.
On-Demand Apps
Flutter can create On-demand Apps such as ride-sharing, Food delivery, which require real-time functionality and location tracking to work effortlessly with back-end technologies. Thus Flutter is an excellent choice as it can easily handle these queries.
Education Apps
Flutter is used to build interactive and engaging educational apps that provide students with personalized learning experiences. An example is the Google Primer app, which offers bite-sized lessons on various topics.
Healthcare Apps
Healthcare apps require secure and reliable applications that provide accurate and up-to-date information. Flutter’s ability to create safe and reliable applications and real-time functionality make it an excellent choice for creating healthcare apps that require accurate and up-to-date information. Is an essential tool for maximizing the efficacy of your online advertising efforts.
Travel Apps
Travel apps require integrating maps and location-based services to provide users with real-time information and personalized experiences. Flutter’s ability to do so makes it a great choice. Its wide range of functionalities, including booking management, itinerary planning, and travel guides, make it an ideal tool for creating travel apps.
Gaming Apps
Flutter can create gaming apps running smoothly across different platforms. Flutter provides powerful graphics and animation libraries for creating 2D games running smoothly across various platforms, programming languages, and devices.
Top Companies That Use Flutter in 2023
Flutter has expanded and is now the preferred choice for developing enterprise-level applications. Here are some top-rated apps built using Flutter
Google Ads
Built using Flutter, the app is designed to help people manage and track their advertising campaigns on Google. With Google Ads, users can quickly see their ads’ performance, adjust their ads and budgets, and receive real-time information from one convenient platform. Whether you’re a business owner or a professional, the app is for you
Google Play Store rating: 4.5
Apple Store rating: 4.5/5
eBay Motors
Developed by the giant e-commerce marketplace eBay, This app allows you to browse various vehicle categories. It includes additional features, such as adding information for resale purposes.
Play Store rating: 3.5/5
Apple Store rating: 4/5
Google Pay
Google Pay facilitates online payment, which overlooks the use of a wallet and physical cash. It is one of the most popular payment modes where users can connect with their bank accounts and make payments using a QR code and phone number.
Play Store rating: 4.5/5
Apple Store rating: 3.5/5
Hamilton
It is the official app for the Broadway musical which is built using Flutter. It offers multiple benefits like exclusive news, daily lotteries, trivia games, videos, and merchandise, all wrapped in a user interface where the visual elements stay true to the musical imagery.
Play Store App rating: 4.4/5
Apple Store rating: 4.5
Dream11
Dream 11 is one of India’s most prominent sports fantasy platforms, with a user base of more than 70 million playing fantasy cricket, football, NBA, and hockey. It also handles hundreds of thousands of transactions daily, serving top-class security.
Play Store App rating: 4.3/5
Apple Store rating: 4.5
Let’s turn your app idea into a reality that users will love
Hire the best Flutter app development company that can help you build an app that stands out from the competition.
Industries That Benefited From Using Flutter
When it comes to developing high-performance, visually appealing web apps for multiple platforms, web platforms, and industries, Flutter is the best choice. Its benefits make it an ideal tool for finance, banking, real estate, e-commerce, and more industries. let’s unlock how Flutter can be used for business app development in various Industries based on our research into existing Flutter-based web apps in different sectors
Flutter Finance and Banking Industry
Flutter is on the emerging side for the finance and banking sector to create apps for their customers because it can handle complex data and real-time updates. Top-notch fintech apps such as Cryptograph, Nubank, and Birch Finance have been built using Flutter, which enhanced short stability, consistent UI, and improved build time. Flutter’s high-speed make it an excellent choice for the industry.
Flutter for Real Estate
Flutter’s high-resolution image and fast graphic rendering make it an add-on advantage for Real Estate app development. Its hot reload feature speeds up the growth and updating of listings, prices, and other information. Brazilian real estate companies QuintoAndar and Realtor.com have used Flutter for their projects.
Flutter E-commerce Industry
Online shops and marketplaces use Flutter to create mobile apps. Groupon and Alibaba’s Xianyu app are examples of successful eCommerce mobile apps built using the Flutter framework. Groupon integrated Flutter into their merchant app, which had 500,000 downloads, compared to their customer app, with over 100M+ downloads. The Xianyu app, built using Flutter, has 136.5 million active users daily.
Flutter is a finer choice for social media apps, allowing you to create beautiful, high-quality native apps, with minimal effort. Apps like PostMuse, Klaster, and Hookle have been developed to manage social media accounts and create engaging stories and content using Flutter.
Entertainment Industry
The Dart and reactive programming features are used by Flutter, allowing smooth and responsive animations and user interfaces. They are unique for entertainment apps which often rely on complicated animations and interactive features. Sua Musica, Hamilton, and inKino Cinema are examples of successful music streaming, musical community, and movie showtime browsing apps built with Flutter that offer exceptional user experiences.
Retail Industry
Flutters’ easy customization with widgets tools and features makes it a perfect fit for retail app development.GRAB, a food delivery app, uses Flutter to build its merchant application, enabling local businesses to grow without requiring extensive technical knowledge .eBay Motors also leveraged Flutter development for their buy-sell marketplace app, reporting 2X faster development time and 98.3% less native code by sharing, thanks to Flutter’s full native code development capabilities.
Logistics and Supply Chain Industry
Flutter is an excellent choice for logistics and supplies chain due to its easy use and scalability, allowing developers to quickly create efficient, tailored apps for their customers and business operations.
Flutter for Automotive Industry
Flutter is an excellent choice for creating visually appealing and engaging automobile applications. Toyota and BMW are two examples of industry leaders that have utilized the Flutter engine for their apps, providing users with an enhanced in-vehicle experience and additional features, respectively.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Flutter app development has become a popular choice for mobile app development due to its speed, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. With its ability to operate 50% faster than native Android app and iOS applications, Flutter apps can save businesses substantial time and money. Additionally, hiring a Scrum Master from an Agile Software Development Company like Bacancy Technology can ensure a smooth development process and improved app performance. By choosing a Flutter app development, for your next-generation mobile app, you can expect a high-performing, cost-effective solution that meets your business needs.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Flutter apps are written using the Dart Programming language. Here the Dart code is compiled into native code for the target platform(Android or iOS)so resulting in the app running as a native app on the device.
Flutter uses Dart because Dart is strictly OOP, client-optimized language, using JIT (just-in-time) and ahead of time (AOT) compilation.
Using Flutter for your large projects is a wise decision because it helps you with better performance and optimized time spent by building cross-platform applications for varied OS platforms and screens.
You might want to read, Flutter Vs React Native: Head to Toe Comparison for clear understanding.
Flutter is primarily a frontend development toolkit, but it can easily integrate with the backend servers and API to fetch data and perform other functions to create robust mobile applications.