The present work deals with the analysis and benchmarking of frameworks for cross- platform mobile application development.
Mobile devices have shaped our society. In 2011, more than 11.8 million smartphones were sold in Germany. This means that 43 percent of mobile phones sold in Germany were smartphones. Besides the innovative devices themselves, the available applications for these devices – so-called Apps – contributed to this suc- cess story. Most frequently, SDKs are being used to develop apps. However, there are alternative development approaches and numerous frameworks that enable a faster and more cost-effective development. The first part of this work focuses on these topics.

Companies such as Daimler AG have to deal with heterogeneous devices. If an app needs to be developed for several platforms, the use of frameworks for cross- platform development is even more interesting due to time- and cost reasons. In or- der to perform a necessary framework analysis, a representative app, the “Who is Who” app, needs to be defined. Due to the demands that are put on this “Who is Who” App specific criteria can be defined which can then be used to evaluate and compare different frameworks.
The result of this study serves as a basis for the selection of specific frameworks for the development of mobile applications.

Original title:
Analyse und Benchmarking von Frameworks für die plattformübergreifende Entwicklung mobiler Anwendungen

Master thesis written by Sebastian Walter, February 2012.

Second supervisor: Mathias Peter, Daimler AG