What is the future of Flutter?

by Ronak Patel
Posted: Apr 08, 2021

Flutter, powered by Google, is a software development kit to build cross-platform apps for iOS and Android. "Write once, Use Everywhere", is the slogan on which this Hybrid framework work. Flutter Developers use a single code for multiple platforms.

Google launched Flutter in 2017 and made major developmental updates rapidly in a short time. Despite being a new player, the innovation speed at which Flutter is gaining popularity is commendable. The reason is the significant updates added to the language in such a brief span. With this said, the Future of Flutter seems triumphant.

At the pace at which Flutter is growing, on both market presence and features front, developers now believe Flutter is the future of cross-platform application development. The blog discusses the reasons and answers to the questions- What is the future of Flutter? Is Flutter worth learning? Does Flutter have a future in 2021?

Flutter has seen rapid growth in the last 3 years since its release. Half a million developers use Flutter each month.

Some Statistics to back the facts:

Out of total Flutter developers, 78% use the stable version, 11% use beta, and 11% use either dev or master.
The top five countries that use Flutter are India, China, the United States, the EU, and Brazil.
Approximately 90,000 Flutter apps are there in the Play Store.

The benefits of Flutter for business

The biggest benefit is Flutter's super-fast development Speed for both iOS and Android. This makes Flutter a smart choice for making prototypes and Minimal Viable Products (MVPs).

For instance, the Youbahn is an app for finding student work created using Flutter. The time to build the app was 12 man-weeks for the first version of the app. Whereas, a native app requires around 16 man-weeks. A saving of 30%. Also, Flutter uses 120 frames per second (fps). Besides, with animations, Flutter can give apps a highly engaging visual experience.

The benefits of Flutter for developers

Flutter has several advantages for developers:

First, More direct control over the screens (views) of the app. Every pixel is under control.

Second, immediate display of the updates or any changes in the app.

Third, Unlike Native apps, no need to make a package (compile) to see the results.

Fourth, Flutter projects are less layered than native ones.

Fifth, Dart is a much strict language. It quickly alters mistakes, if any. This saves time debugging time.

Finally, Dart strongly resembles Java. Besides, iOS developers are also comfortable with it.

Yet, knowledge of native app development remains essential for creating Flutter apps.

Reasons That Makes Flutter a future of Cross-Platform App Development

Single Code for Multiple Platforms

Flutter follows " Write Once, Run Everywhere". A single codebase can run on Android, iOS, desktop, and web. For app development in minimal effort, cost, and time, Flutter is the perfect pick.

Completely customizable widgets

Flutter contains a list of platform-centric widgets for native-like UI interface designing. The two sets of Flutter widgets – Cupertino and Material Design widgets are customizable and reusable.

The Material Design is for implementing Google’s design and Cupertino for Apple’s iOS Human interface guidelines. This gives developers many creative options to build polished apps.

Super-Fast application development

The next big benefit is its capability to speed up the development and testing process. The single code base with the hot reload feature facilitates real-time testing. Thus, lowering the mobile app development time and cost as well.

A wide number of open-source package

Flutter is an end-to-end open-source platform. Thus, global developers constantly add new works, making the library more extensive.

Further, several free open-source packages are there: Youtube_player, Flutter Ecommerce, and Frideos_flutter, and others.

Great learning sources

Flutter offers extensive learning resources for new developers. The wide learning documentation comes combined with the massive Flutter community.

Great developer experience

Flutter framework provides top IDE support through IntelliJ/Android Studio and Visual Studio Code plugins. Besides, knowledge of Dart is only required, not other languages like Swift, JavaScript.

Moreover, Flutter performs impressively with heavy-memory applications.

2Dimensions Flare

Flare is a vector-based animation tool, which comes along with Flutter. With 2Dimensions Flare, create high-interactive animations for UI design and gaming apps.

Integration with Firebase

Firebase is a Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) app development platform. It is simple and easy to integrate. Firebase eases the use of services like analytics, databases, messaging, and crash reporting.

Where do they need to Improve?

First, since Flutter is a new framework, many Software Development Kits-SDKs does not yet support Flutter. These SDKs need to be integrated into the app seamlessly.

Second, Flutter takes a somewhat longer time to remember where the appended after closing.

Lastly, while debugging, Flutter sometimes shows wrong results, the place other than the real error.

Conclusion: What is the Future of Flutter? - Positive or Negative

The exceptional benefits and tech-advancements that Flutter extends, displays positive signs of Flutter's success. The Future of Flutter is surely bright in 2021 and it will become necessary to all tech-companies to Hire Flutter App Developers.