Mobile Application Development
Native applications are apps that have been developed in the language that a device's operating system was written in. Simply put, it operates in a similar way and also looks the same as what users on a specific platform or operating system are used to i.e. An Android user's experience is very different to an Apple user's experience in that different gestures, animations and techniques are used to get to the same results.
So what does Native actually mean to you or your customers? Well, without getting too technical, it simply means that the application runs more smoothly, there is a lot less jitter when actions occur and the end product is something that gives the user an experience that he or she is used to having.
Native apps also allow us the ability to interact with a devices hardware such as the Camera, GPS, WiFi, Accelerometer, Calendar, Contacts and all those nice little toys our smartphones and tablets have inside them. In a nutshell, in a perfect world, where everything worked the way it should, all apps would be Native!
But as we all know, our world is far from perfect and sometimes perfection is not always the best option as it usually comes at a higher cost and may not be what is necessary for your environment and that is why there is a still a huge market and demand for both Hybrid and HTML5 or Web Apps.