These days Flutter is booming in the market and most of the companies and developers are creating apps in Flutter. In this article, I will explain why Flutter became so popular within such a short time and what makes it such a superb SDK(Software Development Kit) tool.
- What is Flutter?
- The future of cross-platform
- Design and widgets
- Who is using Flutter?
- Community support
- Conclusion
These are the points I am going to elaborate in detail, so stay tuned.
What is Flutter?
Flutter is an open-source mobile SDK (Software Development Kit) created by Google to build native applications for android, iOS, web, desktop, and embedded devices from a single codebase.
In 2015 at the Dart Developer Summit Flutter was announced. It was initially called “Sky”. In 2017 Flutter alpha version (0.0.6) was released. In September 2018 Google launched the second preview of Flutter.
On 5th December 2018, Google announced the first stable version. Flutter gained some popularity before being released as a stable version.
Highlights:
- Flutter is developed by Google.
- Flutter is using a single codebase.
- Flutter can build cross-platform apps as well as web and desktop apps too
- Flutter can run apps on 120 fps (Frame Per Second) where others can achieve only a maximum of 60 fps.
- Flutter is written in C, C++, and Dart language.
- Google released Flutter 3.0.2 on 10th June 2022.
The future of cross-platform
There is no doubt that Flutter will become the next big thing in developing cross-platform applications over the coming years.
Before Flutter, there were many cross-platform development frameworks, such as React Native, Xamarin, Angular, Ionic, etc. However, Xamarin and React Native were more popular than other cross-platform frameworks.
You can see in the below image how the popularity graph changed after Flutter was released.
Source: Google Developer Blog
Design and widgets
Flutter is very easy for designers, It is using material design so it is easy to design and looks better. In Flutter there will be no platform-specific design issues will come. In other cross-platform frameworks most of the time platform-specific design issues will come for UI design.
Everything in Flutter is widgets. Developers can make an elegant and expressive UI by combining different widgets in line with the client’s business models. Flutter has rich widgets support for structural elements, stylistic elements, and etc. There is one more benefit Flutter developers can create their own custom widgets.
Who is using Flutter?
The world most valuable and top companies are using the Flutter, here are some companies name that is using Flutter:
- Google (Google Ads, Google Assistance, and Google Pay)
- BMW
- Alibaba
- eBay
- Square
- Dream 11
- Zerodha
- ByteDance, etc
There are many start-up companies using Flutter, but above I have listed some of the most popular names.
The official Flutter YouTube channel has a developer stories series where you can see most of the start-up companies are using Flutter. You can visit their official channel if you are interested in discovering more about start-up companies and apps.
Link: Flutter Developer Stories
Community support
Flutter communities are active groups of developers who can support each other and resolve issues quickly, saving developers time and effort.
Google I/O is always working on Flutter support and maintenance to make the platform more reliable. Questions can be discussed and doubts resolved easily.
There are many developers worldwide who contribute to Flutter's community and keep it running.
See the link below to learn about the benefits of contributing to the Flutter community.
Link: Flutter Community
Conclusion
You can see the above-discussed points how the Flutter is growing and capturing the cross-platform development market. But here I am going to give my conclusion in two parts,
1) Developers who wish to learn Flutter
As a cross-platform application development framework, Flutter is very good, and it is booming in the market right now. It is easy to learn and has good community support.
2) Companies who want to adapt Flutter
The most famous and valuable companies in the world are using Flutter, so it makes sense to build your app using Flutter. It also has some benefits from a company perspective.
- There is no need to hire separate iOS and Android developers
- You can build natively cross-platform apps
- It will take less time compared to other cross-platform frameworks
- It will reduce your cost of development
- It has a good UI design
- One single codebase, etc
I hope you like this article.
The article is sponsored by: UniqueApps
Top comments (2)
Great read! As a Flutter enthusiast, I appreciate how you've captured its potential. It truly is a game-changer in cross-platform development. For a deeper dive into cross-platform solutions, don't miss Cross-Platform Solutions: Exploring the Best for Your Next App. Happy Fluttering!
Now I don't understand why Flutter should be used. The central question remains unanswered. At this point I would have expected that there would be a concrete comparison, but here it is clear that the spread on the market is the only argument. That's not very meaningful. Likewise, the statement who uses Flutter does not help. It looks like the article was completely scrapped from the website. At least some very concrete examples would help to understand what effort could be saved compared to other "frameworks". The blog post fell far short of my expectations.