Flutter is a powerful cross-platform framework widely embraced by modern IT teams using a single code base for mobile app development. It harnesses the programming language Dart, which is easily approachable for those familiar with Java or C#.
Over the past years, the platform's popularity has surged. According to Statista, in 2019, it was used by 30% of app developers; in 2020, by 39%; in 2021, by 42%; and by 2022, the number of enthusiasts employing this cross-platform app development tool had grown to 46%. This demand for the framework stands out, especially compared to its main competitor – React Native. While 42% of programmers preferred it in 2019 and 2020, only 38% and 32% used it in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
In this piece, we'll delve into the reasons behind Flutter's rapid rise in popularity, discuss the features of Flutter apps, and explore some of the most notable digital solutions created using this framework.
Understanding Flutter Framework
So, why are developers increasingly opting for the Flutter framework to craft modern, high-quality Android and iOS apps? It all comes down to the extensive capabilities this platform offers, thanks to its functionality:
Thanks to all these features, Flutter development comes with several advantages for teams compared to creating apps on other platforms:
Uniform UI across platforms: A unique Flutter capability that lets you build digital solutions that look native on different devices. Unlike other frameworks that use platform-specific components for rendering, Flutter doesn't require them, simplifying the development process.
Accelerated development and release: Made possible by the hot-reload feature mentioned earlier.
Flexible UI design customization: The framework grants access to graphic and animation libraries, 3D graphics support, and the ability to manipulate light, shadow, object shapes, and other transformation options. These possibilities aren't always available when developing native apps.
Stability and reliability assurance: Backed by digital industry giant Google, the framework ensures timely updates and improvements.
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Showcasing Apps Built with Flutter
Using Flutter for mobile app development has become a real trend in the modern IT sphere. We present to you a list of what we consider to be the best apps made with Flutter.
MyBMW
Another digital solution for Android and iOS was created using Flutter. Users can interact fully with their BMW vehicles through this app. Among the app's features: checking battery charge level, trip planning, remote door locking, optimizing energy consumption, and much more.
The complexity of the required functions and the need to create a universal app for all platforms led BMW developers to evaluate several frameworks. They ultimately chose Flutter, saving valuable development time in the process.
New York Times
The capabilities of the New York Times app go far beyond what one might expect from its name, extending beyond news reports. In addition to push notifications, article recommendations based on interests, and the ability to share free articles with non-subscribers, the app offers word, visual, and numerical games. One of these, the KenKen puzzle, was created using Flutter.
The framework's capabilities allow for launching the app on iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS devices, ensuring a consistently positive user experience across all platforms.
In this section, we've discussed the best Flutter apps, regardless of their field of use. Next, let's address who uses Flutter in the E-commerce, Health and Fitness, Social Networking, and On-Demand Services industries.
Apps Made with Flutter in the E-commerce Industry
The e-commerce market is continuously evolving, gradually displacing traditional offline stores. According to statistics, global online sales reached $5.2 trillion in 2021. This figure grew to $6.3 trillion in 2023 and is projected to reach $8.2 trillion by 2026.
Given this rapid growth, e-commerce demands scalable, functional apps with excellent scalability prospects. This is precisely what Flutter offers to app developers.
Let's take a look at a few e-commerce digital solutions created using this framework:
Alibaba Xianyu
This app allows the world's largest e-commerce platform, Alibaba, to promote the sale of used goods. The company aimed to create a digital solution that would function equally well across different devices, boasting an attractive design and high performance. To achieve these goals, Alibaba's team chose Flutter.
Today, this Flutter app boasts 50 million users. It enables a swift listing of products and one-click purchases, combining beautiful graphics with high performance. Its cross-platform nature makes it accessible to a wide range of users.
eBay Motors
This app is designed for purchasing new and used cars, auto parts, and finding vehicle maintenance services. For maximum user convenience, the program includes additional features such as a chat for communicating with sellers, notifications about new offers, and the ability to save search results.
Flutter development made the app's user interface logical and flexible. For instance, it can be adapted to specific geolocations, incorporating region-specific payment systems.
Flutter Apps in the Social Networking Space
According to recent research, there are approximately 4.8 billion social media users worldwide. Meanwhile, in 2023, there are around 130 social media platforms in the market. The competition is fierce.
A strong digital solution is essential to effectively compete for users, one that can outshine competitors in all aspects – from design to functionality and speed. Once again, Flutter comes to the rescue.
Here are a few successful examples of using this framework for such applications:
Dream11
This social network brings together fans of various sports games. Users can create teams of real players in different sports like cricket, hockey, football, basketball, volleyball, rugby, baseball, and more. After creating a team, users can participate in organized or private fantasy sports competitions.
The app's success is evident, with over 50 million users. The Dream11 team praises the quick development pace, user-friendly UI, and high performance, regardless of the platform.
Circle
The Circle platform is a unique space where authors and brands can create their own communities, publish thematic courses, conduct live broadcasts, engage in chats, and more. The software product offers users building blocks to construct their own space based on their personal needs.
With over 100,000 downloads on Google Play, the app provides an excellent user experience, rich functionality, and solid performance – all thanks to Flutter.
Flutter in On-Demand Service Applications
Another promising field for app development is on-demand services. Analysts forecast that the European on-demand services market will grow by $1,226.33 billion during the period 2022-2027. Such software aims to connect service providers and consumers.
To ensure a positive user experience, it must have an intuitive interface and high performance. Developers are increasingly choosing Flutter for creating on-demand service applications. Here are a couple of examples:
QuintoAndar
This app connects Brazilian renters and landlords for the best real estate deals. The company faced the challenge that most clients used the web app while the Android and iOS programs lagged in quality and demand.
The QuintoAndar team decided to make a change. After analyzing the software market, they considered two frameworks for their project: Flutter and React Native. After a thorough evaluation, they chose Flutter, and the app developers haven't regretted it once. The app's rating noticeably increased; within five months of release, it went from 3.8 to 4.5 on the Play Store. User reviews also significantly improved.
Travelstart
Travelstart is the ultimate digital solution for travelers who want to book hotels, buy flight tickets, rent cars, and access other travel services. A few years ago, the owners of the Travelstart app – a travel agency with the same name – decided to update their app by rewriting it using a cross-platform framework. They chose Flutter to bring this idea to life.
According to Travelstart developers, their choice allowed them to reduce the existing codebase by 90% and cut the mobile engineering team by 60%.
Flutter in the Health and Fitness Domain
According to statistics, the revenue from health and fitness apps in 2023 amounts to $4.1 million. This is a highly promising industry for business development as people increasingly opt for mobility, preferring to maintain a healthy lifestyle without visiting gyms, dietitians, and doctors.
We present Flutter apps in the health and fitness domain that have earned well-deserved recognition from the audience.
Tonal
This cross-platform mobile app for home fitness has a unique design, an intuitive interface, and rich functionality. The team's initial task was to create an Android app, but the analysis of the target audience convinced them to equally focus on both platforms – Android and iOS. Despite the developers of Tonal having no prior experience with Dart, they took the risk and started working on a Flutter project.
The team noted that learning the new programming language was relatively easy, and the development results exceeded expectations. With just two engineers initially working on the project, they launched the product in the market in record time. The team now regularly updates and scales the product with Flutter.
Coach Yourself
This software for self-awareness and meditation allows users to disconnect from the hustle and bustle of the outside world and delve within. Working with Flutter was challenging for the IT team, as everything was new to them: the Dart language, the framework itself, and its API. Nevertheless, the developers succeeded in their tasks, focusing on excellent sound quality in the app, exclusive UI elements, and high-quality background operation.
Today, the app is available on Google Play and the App Store, offered completely free of charge, and has already gained a following.
Success Stories and Testimonials
Who else is using Flutter and successfully growing their business with its help? We've analyzed dozens of successful use cases of this innovative framework and want to share the most impressive ones with you.
Earlier, we described Google Pay as an example of one of the best Flutter apps in the global arena. Now, let's delve into the key metrics of its success and the feedback from the Google specialists who created it.
According to Flutter, the new Google Pay app is smaller in size, easier to manage, and make changes to. Its codebase was reduced by 35%, and the project saved 60-70% of the development time.
“Everyone loved Flutter — you could see the thrill on people’s faces as they talked about how fast it was to build a user interface”, says David Ko, Technical Director at Google Pay.
Nubank
Nubank is a leading global online bank. The company is growing rapidly – in 2022 alone, its customer base increased by 39%, reaching 75 million people. This growth necessitated scaling their digital solution, and the Nubank team chose Flutter.
The developers appreciated the hot reload feature, reliable documentation, stable API, and the framework's testing capabilities.
Among the key indicators of the app's success, we can highlight:
Launch of new features within three months.
Pull request turnaround time of 9.9 minutes (in comparison, this indicator is 70.45 minutes on other platforms).
Dynamic content delivery, allowing updates without launching a new version of the digital solution.
“Flutter had everything we needed right out of the box: good documentation on how to integrate our app, and a hot reload that really works, support from the community, and tooling”, says Igor Borges, Software Engineer at Nubank.
Despite all the advantages and successful Flutter development cases, there are still some challenges that programmers may face:
Limited documentation and learning resources. Despite Flutter's growing community, documentation, and beginner courses for developers, the framework is still relatively young to compete in the available resources with more established platforms.
Finding skilled developers. According to statistics, only 6.02% of programmers are familiar with the Dart language. In comparison, 63.6% of developers code in JavaScript. Therefore, finding a developer who doesn't need to learn the language from scratch can be challenging.
Rest assured, the Lampa team isn't afraid of these challenges. We focus solely on the framework's advantages when working on your project. With us, you can get your digital product listed among the best apps made with Flutter!
Exploring the Flutter Community and Resources
Flutter has a promising and thriving community ready to assist Flutter app developers with any questions.
The Flutter community provides programmers with a range of opportunities:
Networking with peers at group meetings.
Access to exclusive Flutter resources for leaders in its ecosystem.
Attending events organized by the global Flutter community.
Stay updated with the latest news and updates on Twitter, where the community has 178K followers.
Detailed documentation to aid in working with the framework is available on the company's official website or on GitHub, where Flutter has accumulated an impressive 155K stars.
Conclusion
Flutter is a young yet highly promising framework for building cross-platform apps with a unified codebase for user interfaces. Many modern teams prefer it over other well-established frameworks like React Native.
Despite potential challenges while working with Flutter, this framework is undoubtedly worth considering when creating your app. At Lampa, we're ready to assist you in bringing your boldest business idea to life.