The global app store market share by the end of August 2025 is as follows: Android holds 73.9%, while iOS holds 25.71%. However, choosing the right mobile platform depends on more than just these numbers; often, business owners' desire to cover the widest possible target audience by developing software for two native platforms can inflate their budget. So, how can you make the right decision when comparing iOS vs Android vs PWA? Let's find it out – we'll share our insights below.
Overview of Mobile App Platforms
In a nutshell, the native vs cross-platform vs PWA choice is determined primarily by where a business can most rationally invest and where it can expect the fastest and highest ROI. In particular, mobile software often doesn't pay for itself simply because either the audience reach is smaller than planned or the support costs exceed the existing budget. Therefore, let's start with a mobile app platform comparison, assessing their pros and cons.
Native iOS
If your mobile app targets the premium segment or Western markets, iOS is likely the preferred platform. Specifically, these users have a high willingness to pay for subscriptions and in-app purchases, ensuring high unit economics for apps. On the other hand, App Store has strict guidelines for apps uploaded by developers, so the development process itself may require additional time for review and compliance.
Native Android
Based on the above statistics, Android clearly wins where large-scale audience targeting strategies were reasonably chosen as the main ones. Geographically, these are users from Eastern Europe, Asia, and LATAM. At the same time, ARPU is lower in these markets; furthermore, businesses have to invest significant effort in optimizing for different devices and OS versions. During development, this involves separate test pools of devices; otherwise, high user churn becomes almost inevitable.
Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
Another option worth considering is PWA development. This type of software can work offline, send push notifications, and cache data, but monetization can be challenging, especially if you've chosen a subscription-based model and/or in-app purchases. Regardless, for businesses looking to bring an MVP to market as quickly as possible at the lowest budget, PWA may be the optimal choice.
Cross-Platform Frameworks
Flutter, React Native, and other cross-platform frameworks have matured enough to compete with native SDKs. Because they allow the majority of code to be implemented for both platforms simultaneously, a product launches faster and its ongoing support becomes easier. However, this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution: it's more feasible for projects where the functionality and design are more or less identical on both platforms. However, if a product requires numerous integrations with native APIs, developers may need to invest significant effort in developing native modules, which ultimately minimizes the potential benefit.
Business Factors to Consider
In our experience, a mistake in platform selection is more costly than design flaws or bugs. Here are critical aspects to consider before choosing one option or another:
- Target audience and market share. As for user demographics by platform, if your app's target audience is primarily in the US or Western Europe, choosing iOS will bring you to a more solvent segment. If you're targeting developing countries, it makes sense to start with Android to maximize user reach. It's also important to consider the age characteristics of your TA: for example, if your audience is primarily Gen Z, they are more likely to prefer a PWA.
- Budget constraints. In this context, you will face a dilemma: either invest significantly in native development, or save money through a PWA or cross-platform approach (in particular, to more quickly test hypotheses). A staged strategy is also possible, which involves cross-platform development of an MVP and then porting the main modules to native OSes. This allows you to spend your budget more carefully.
- Time to market. If speed to market is your priority, your technical team should consider using ready-made SDKs, low-code libraries, and cross-platform frameworks. However, the time savings may provoke the additional costs of post-launch optimization and further software upgrades.
- App complexity and feature needs. The more complex the mobile app, the greater the risk that a PWA or cross-platform approach will limit you. For example, for food delivery apps, limitations are unlikely, while for mobile banking software with biometrics and integration with dozens of APIs, a native approach is the only right choice.
In short, if you want to make a fully informed decision about a mobile platform, write or call us, and we'll help you with that.
Technical Considerations
Since technical factors directly impact user experience, this naturally affects business metrics as well – in particular, user retention, conversion, lifetime value, etc. Therefore, before choosing a platform, you will have to evaluate the following aspects:
- Performance and UX differences. Modern users are often dissatisfied with even a fraction of a second of software lag. Moreover, in eCommerce apps, every pause when dealing with the shopping cart reduces conversion rates by a significant percentage. From this perspective, native apps clearly win, but our experience shows that with the right architecture, cross-platform apps can also achieve similar results. That's why we conduct not only standard UX testing but also A/B testing with representatives of the target audience.
- Platform-specific APIs and integrations. There are a number of platform-specific features that can only be implemented through native development (in particular, with ARKit for iOS, Android-specific integrations, interaction with sensors and Bluetooth, and so on) If these features are critical to your software, the choice in favor of native development will be obvious, as implementing native capabilities through cross-platform tools will ultimately be much more expensive.
- Maintenance and updates. Mobile project owners often miscalculate their support budgets; at the same time, OS updates, expanded device support, and new marketplace requirements require regular investments. If the development cost by platform is paramount, a cross-platform approach makes sense, but this will increase your development team's dependence on framework updates as well. So, be sure to consider deployment and maintenance differences before you start looking for a development team with specific hard skills.
At WEZOM, we always determine the total cost of ownership for 2-3 years in advance at the start of our collaboration with clients, so they can make an informed choice of platform. If you also want to make the right decision in favor of a particular mobile OS, please contact us individually.
Monetization and Distribution
Choosing the channels for distribution and app monetization options by platform is crucial, too: a seemingly perfect solution without a clearly defined revenue model and carefully selected promotion strategy will fail to become a stable asset. This is where businesses often underestimate the risks, such as App Store restrictions, Google Play requirements, transaction fees, and differences in app store promotion.
In particular, the Apple App Store is characterized by extremely strict rules: it charges a 15-30% fee on transactions, requires mandatory use of Apple Pay for digital content, and conducts regular checks for compliance with guidelines. Because of all this, mobile app owners can lose weeks due to review rejections.
It's also worth noting that the App Store and Google Play require different approaches to promotion: Apple prioritizes the correct selection of keywords and visuals, while Google's algorithms are more dependent on user behavior and reviews. That's why we perform A/B testing with Google Play Experiments and App Store Connect – it allows us to test what works and what doesn't for your target audience.
As for monetization models, most modern apps choose a subscription-based one: for example, world-famous Spotify, Netflix, and Tinder receive their revenue from this model. However, it's important to remember that due to the need to connect subscriptions with an Apple ID (in the case of native iOS development), the fees for businesses will be quite high. Meanwhile, Android offers much more flexibility in integrating external payments, especially in regions where Google Pay is less popular.
Case Studies: Platform Choices in Real Projects
The global market is replete with countless examples of platform choice determining a product's success. For instance, Instagram launched as an iOS-only app, thereby gaining a premium audience and, consequently, attracting its first major investors. WhatsApp, by contrast, relied on Android to quickly capture the mass market in India and Latin America. Uber chose a native approach on both platforms – all because its business model required flawless performance.
Ultimately, these stories tell us that the platform isn't just another technical aspect of your project, but a fundamental part of its business strategy.
How WEZOM Helps You Choose and Build on the Right Platform
Now, let's talk about the specifics of our approach on how to choose a mobile app platform. Specifically, we never try to "sell" a specific technology or development format – our priority is to select a tool that perfectly aligns with your business goals. That's why we always start with the discovery stage, modeling monetization scenarios with the client, identifying the most profitable distribution channels, and assessing all possible risks. As a result, our clients gain a clear understanding from the outset of which platform is best suited for the project now, what costs they can expect in a year, and how this might impact future app scaling. For example, if the audience is premium and loyal to subscription payments, we usually start with native iOS development. However, if the project is aimed at a large audience in developing countries, Android is a much better choice.
We also always verify the feasibility of the planned functionality on various platforms. For example, if we're talking about complex APIs (like using sensors or AR technologies), we build prototypes on native SDKs to validate the hypothesis. If the client's priority is maximizing target audience reach and launching an MVP as quickly as possible, we calculate the budget and timeline for cross-platform development. We also always conduct test sprints and demonstrate results to our clients long before they allocate substantial budgets.
Finally, a few words about scalability – for us, this term primarily means enabling a mobile app to grow without rewriting its code from scratch. Therefore, we often choose a modular, API-first approach and implement CI/CD and monitoring early on. This allows our clients to start with MVPa and then gradually develop them into full-fledged products on the same foundation.
If you're interested in the practical nuances of implementing each of these approaches, we highly recommend checking our pages with relevant services: cross-platform development, iOS development, PWA development, and Android development.
Conclusion
Choosing the best mobile app platform in 2025 has become much more difficult than it was, for instance, five years ago. While native apps remain the standard choice for high performance and UX requirements, PWAs and cross-platform solutions have gained ground thanks to push notifications, offline mode, and native-like speed. So, if you're still unsure about your mobile platform selection, don't waste a minute – write or call us right now.
