The cross-platform tool market has “just become so crowded that selecting the right one is a project on its own”, according to research2guidance.

Having previously described such tools as the “hidden champions” of the app economy, the firm now says that $2.4 billion worth of projects per year could be supported by cross-platform products. This is based on 65,000 app projects with an average size of $38,000.

The company said that users of cross-platform tools report a “significant efficiency gain” of around 30 per cent, which could result in higher margins (in total $800 million per year) or enable additional app projects.

research2guidance also said that around 8 per cent of apps are “rather easy multi-platform apps which wouldn’t need native app features of mobile platforms”, and therefore do not need access to more sophisticated tools.

Adobe Air, PhoneGap, Xamarin, JQuery and Unity 3D are “among the few cross-platform tools known by the majority of app developers and publishers”, with another six known by around 30 per cent of respondents.

This means the “great majority” of cross-platform tools are “hardly known” or “unknown”, including some which have the backing of an “established IT solution vendor” like IBM (Worklight) or Incross (DaVinci).

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