Kotlin Multiplatform, Compose Multiplatform: Apple’s Strategic Failure

If Apple will not lead, then someone else will do so.

Art by Michael Long, photo by Alexander Andrews.

“The Kotlin Multiplatform technology is designed to simplify the development of cross-platform projects. It reduces time spent writing and maintaining the same code for different platforms while retaining the flexibility and benefits of native programming.” ~ Kotlin.org

It’s the Holy Grail of mobile application developers — and management — everywhere.

The ability to write code once, and then run it on any platform.

There are several reasons to want this:

1. A common code base reduces inconsistencies between platforms.
2. Reduced testing requirements.
3. Reduced time to market.
4. Reduced cost of development.

But to be honest, it’s probably the latter point that’s key.

Because when you get right down to it, mobile application development is expensive. iOS and Android developers are not cheap, and management and the C-suite have always chaffed at the idea of having to spend perfectly good money to write the same exact application twice.