While doing a review of Google Sites, a second “no coding required” app making system was encountered. Forrester calls this tool system – Mobile Low-Code Platforms For Business Developers. Forrester and Clutch identify this as a fast  growing development segment as companies look to speed up data and information exchange internally between offices and divisions and externally with various customers, suppliers and clients.

But what is certainly propelling this App Generation is the fact that mobile phones/devices have the computing power [ but not screen size or disk space] of desktop computers of  just 3-5 years ago. Second, everybody moving around has a mobile phone not just for calls but entertainment games,  browsing the web and info utility apps and uses. Third, as mobile WiFi speeds have gone through  3 generations in 20 years from 2-5  megabits/second to  20-50 megabits/second 5 years ago to an upcoming 200-500 megabits/second with 5G services emerging in the next year, all at roughly the same price – the way people interact with the Web is changing profoundly.

This is the mobile mandate. How do organizations and  businesses large and small take advantage of  potential customers having a desktop computer in their pockets with now near instant communication speeds on a mobile phone.

And there are two major development  contenders for creating the apps and websites for large and small businesses. The Mobile App Making Systems are laser focused on creating native mobile phone apps that allow businesses to push notifications to clients about specials deals or new services. Or do   browsing through their sales offers or support services offline. Yet still offer a complete website set of services – About, Shopping, Backup& Support, Event Scheduling, Info Help & Advisories, etc.

Starting at the desktop level are the Website Builders. These tools also have no-coding required, drag and drop designers. And these tools deliver increasingly savvy mobile responsive systems – this means they deliver pages attuned to the device [mobile phone, tablet, desktop or special screens]making a connection. Finally, WordPress Pagebuilder are able to add plugins that afford push notifications, offline browsing and delivery of native mobile code. 

So the next 3-5 years will show which set of tools – Mobile Appmakers or Website Builder will be able to take advantage of the huge increment in 5G communications speed and sophisticated messaging that now “just-barely-fit” on 4G channels.

Mobile Usage Trends 

Worldwide Mobile UsageCisco Systems provides projections on the global mobile data traffic from 2017 to 2022. In 2018, global mobile data traffic amounted to 19.01 exabytes per month. In 2022, mobile data traffic worldwide is expected to reach 77.5 exabytes per month at a compound annual growth rate of 46 percent.

A word about exabytes. An exabyte is a billion gigabytes. So if we look at the 2019 projected monthly usage  of 28 exabytes that  allows for 8 gigabytes/month for every one of the Earth’s 3.5 billion Internet users. Right now I am overusing my quota of web gigabytes by about 8 to 10  times.

Next is the current trend usage of Mobile phones and devices for browsing the Web:StatCounter describes the share of mobile phone website traffic worldwide. In 2018, 52.2 percent of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones, up from 50.3 percent in the previous year. Mobile currently accounts for half of all global web pages served. As of February 2017, mobile accounts for 65.1 percent of all web traffic in Asia and for 59.5 percent of all web traffic in Africa


Here is  the global use of Desktop vs Mobile Phone vs Tablets:
StatCounter explains the increasing volume of mobile  usage on three factors – 1)mobile usage dominates desktop in emerging countries; 2)mobile phones are more likely to be carried and used throughout the day than a desktop or even laptop computer and 3) tablet usage after plateauing has started to grow again as better mobile screen viewing area and new 5G-powered Skype-like meeting apps.

“No Coding Required” Mandate

What is the origin of the no coding required mandate? It certainly is  offered by all of the Mobile Appmakers and all of the desktop Website Builders  and for the last 10 years.

Notably other desktop programming tools like Microsoft Visual Studio or Java’s Eclipse and NetBeans have had drag and drop designers for  at least two decades. These tools delivered  easy to use UI-User Interfaces  and certainly speeded development.

However, to deliver styling options, optimum performance  and inter-communications, many tools had to use blocks of code be it CSS, JavaScript or other  programming languages. And hooking up the front-end UIs also required chunks of trigger code..

So “no coding required” tools deliver 4 benefits:

  1. Faster design and development;
  2. Effective reuse with templates libraries;
  3. More user customizations and styling;
  4. Ability to respond to change faster.

The net result is more responsive groups and often lower costs.

App Making systems deliver:

  1. no coding required;
  2. devoted primarily to mobile app features and layout;
  3. extensive mobile page templates;
  4. enables local, offline operations
  5. integration with spreadsheet data in the office and on the cloud;
  6. tied in closely with mobile messaging and notification tools;
  7. some extra data integrations ;

Below is a list of some of the top rated mobile AppMakers. Click on the Name for more detailed info and the image for a popup video overview of the tool .

Contrast the Website Builder tools options:

  1. no coding required;
  2. delivers mobile, tablet, and desktop layouts and features;
  3. extensive layout  templates;
  4. integration with Office Data, XML, SQL, BigData in the office and on the cloud;
  5. adding mobile messaging and notification tools;
  6. data integrations through AJAX, RestAPI, GraphQL, XMLRPC, etc.

Again there is a list below of some of the top rated WordPress PageBuilders. Click on the Name for more detailed info and the image for a popup video of the tool overview.Again there id