Today, mobile apps are the foundation of modern engagement and operational execution. Whether it’s delighting customers or equipping field services to operate faster, safer, and smarter, mobile is no longer an add-on. 

Consider the reality:

• Almost 90% of mobile usage happens in apps, not browsers. If your experience isn’t app-based, you’re missing where engagement actually occurs.
• Mobile apps drive higher revenue and loyalty than mobile web users.
• Mobile tools can boost field productivity by 20-30% through real-time data capture and task execution.
• Organisations that mobilise customer and field workflows see reduced operational costs and faster service cycles.

Despite this upside, many enterprises still stall. While many organisations explore mobile app development, only about 20% actually launch. That gap represents a significant missed opportunity to increase engagement and revenue while reducing costs.

Why mobile experience is the new competitive battleground

The most successful mobile apps aren’t just functional. They’re delightful. Users now expect subtle animations that guide their attention, gesture-driven navigation that feels natural, interfaces that load instantly and respond fluidly, and consistent design patterns that build trust and familiarity over time.

These details are far from “nice to have”. They directly influence adoption and usability, conversion rates, customer satisfaction, retention, and overall brand perception.

In consumer-facing apps, especially, users won’t tolerate experiences that feel like a web app squeezed onto a phone. But the same is increasingly true in enterprise environments. The effectiveness of field services applications, for example, depends heavily on how intuitive, responsive, and friction-free they are in real-world conditions, often under time pressure and limited connectivity.

3 barriers to mobile success

Most mobile initiatives don’t fail because IT leaders doubt the value. They fail because mobile delivery is still perceived as difficult, costly, and slow.

• Belief that native quality comes at a native cost
  Customers expect mobile apps to feel fluid, intuitive, and alive. Smooth animations. Responsive gestures. Fast transitions. When apps fall short, adoption drops fast. Traditionally, achieving that “native feel” has meant separate iOS and Android teams, long delivery cycles, higher costs and fragmented ownership. For many organisations, that trade-off simply doesn’t stack up.
• Fragmentation slows everything down
  Teams often find themselves rebuilding the same features multiple times – once for web, once for iOS, once for Android. Small changes ripple across platforms, introducing delays, inconsistencies, and technical debt. The result? Mobile roadmaps slip, quality suffers, and innovation slows just when speed matters most.
  
• Experience consistency is harder than it looks
  Modern mobile users move seamlessly between devices. They expect the same quality of experience across an iPhone, an Android tablet, and a Progressive Web App (PWA). Delivering that consistency – layouts that adapt perfectly, animations that feel natural, gestures that behave as expected – is one of the hardest challenges in mobile development today.

Rethinking how mobile apps are built

The organisations unlocking real mobile growth are changing how they build – not just what they build. Instead of treating mobile as a separate, specialist discipline for iOS or Android, they’re adopting approaches that let them reuse skills, patterns, and logic across platforms. The goal is to deliver native-quality experiences without the cost and complexity of traditional native development, while still moving faster without sacrificing user experience or governance.This is where OutSystems’ new Modern Mobile approach changes the equation.

How we can help customers win on mobile

With its new Modern Mobile toolkit, OutSystems ODC is transforming mobile development. The toolkit includes a modern mobile runtime with a dedicated mobile UI framework. Teams can use the same tools, components, and patterns to design, build, and deploy native-quality apps across iOS, Android, and PWAs without managing separate teams. What does that mean in practice?

One code-base, multiple platforms, exceptional UI/UX and huge time savings.

The result is a consistent, native-quality look and feel across mobile experiences, combined with faster release cycles and simpler customisation of native projects. Teams benefit from fewer handoffs and less rework, while delivering mobile-first experiences that feel intuitive and natural. For field services teams, applications can also seamlessly sync data once network coverage is restored, ensuring productivity continues even in offline environments.

OutSystems’ new mobile-optimised UI patterns make it significantly easier to deliver experiences that feel truly native. Teams can design apps with smooth animations and transitions, gesture-driven navigation, and interfaces that feel fast, responsive, and natural to use. This approach is particularly powerful for consumer-facing applications where user experience directly impacts revenue, for mobile-first initiatives that can’t afford to compromise on UX, and for apps that rely on fast refresh cycles or real-time interactions.

With OutSystems Modern Mobile tools, teams gain speed without sacrifice. By eliminating duplicate effort and avoiding platform silos, organisations can reduce development and maintenance costs, accelerate time-to-market, and retain the deployment flexibility of web technologies without sacrificing performance.

In short, it delivers native-quality outcomes with web-level agility.

Real-world use cases that matter

Use cases that highlight where Modern Mobile capabilities make a tangible difference, driving engagement, productivity, and long-term value include:

• Customer engagement apps where fluid animations and intuitive flows directly impact conversion
• Mobile workforce solutions that rely on fast, responsive interactions in the field
• Retail and financial apps where trust, performance, and consistency influence customer loyalty
• Long-term mobile strategies require a stable foundation that can evolve as user expectations rise.

Turn ambition into reality

OutSystems ODC’s new Modern Mobile toolkit helps organisations remove the historical barriers that caused many mobile initiatives to stall in the first place. It closes the gap between mobile ambition and mobile reality – delivering apps that look better, feel better, and get to market faster. For teams ready to move beyond experimentation and fully capitalise on mobile’s potential, the opportunity is clear: build once, delight everywhere, and scale with confidence. Organisations that get mobile right will unlock growth, efficiency, and competitive advantage.

Do you want to learn more about OutSystems mobile capabilities? Schedule a quick demo.