Mobile App Architecture: Everything You Need To Know in 2025

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Table of Contents

Introduction

According to Statista, half of the internet traffic comes from mobile devices. The same data states that mobile apps will generate a significant $935 billion in revenue in 2025. Further, overall mobile app revenue is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.27% from 2022 to 2026, reaching a value of 614.40 billion USD by 2026. Now, the question arises of why we are showcasing this data. Well! The answer is that this significant rise in popularity is due to the performant applications taking the market by storm, which is again due to efficient mobile app architecture, which makes them robust and performant.

What is Mobile App Architecture?

A mobile app architecture refers to a set of rules, techniques, processes, and patterns for developing mobile applications. These rules help your development teams create apps that meet your business needs, requirements, and industry standards.

A mobile application architecture is also a collection of UI/UX, data flow, tech stack, and every other similar thing that makes your application functional and useful. The architecture also helps define the entry points for your end-users and various other components and their interactions.

What Makes A Good Mobile App Architecture?

A few mobile app design best practices lead to the development of successful business applications. Let’s examine those points in brief.

Compatibility

It is the first and foremost aspect of a good mobile application architecture because no matter how good or performant your mobile app is, it is incompatible with different devices and platforms. There is no use in having a performance application at all. Therefore, a mobile architecture app must be compatible with multiple platforms.

Compatibility here is the ability of your mobile app to share and receive data or information from multiple systems or perform the intended functions without restrictions to interfaces. Solid architecture allows you to build a system that can easily interact with other systems and offer extensive compatibility.

Performance

The next factor in creating a performant and efficient mobile application architecture is performance, which ensures that your users get an exceptional user experience and stay on your app. Designing the best architecture apps will help optimize your app’s performance by managing resources, handling data efficiently, and reducing performance bottlenecks within your business application operation.

Your mobile app performance is ideally dependent on its architecture, which defines how different components within your application interact and behave to make the whole app functional. Good architecture helps deliver a smooth and functional app to your end-users with an intuitive experience and quick response times.

Scalability

You never build an application for today’s users, but you build an app today for tomorrow’s users. Therefore, scalability is an important aspect of your business application. A good mobile application architecture diagram offers extensive scalability opportunities within your business application, and you can only add new features and functionalities if your app is highly scalable.

The best architecture app allows you to create scalable applications and easily integrate new features based on your requirements. Also, as you grow, the increasing workload and users require your app to be scalable, or else you can face performance issues.

Security

Security is that aspect of a mobile application with which you can enter the market; with growing users of mobile applications, the risk for privacy and security is a significant issue. The data breaches at Yahoo (2013-2016) and at Microsoft (Jan 2021) rank as some of the biggest data breaches in the history of the web. Nobody wants these to happen again, and since then, the security of mobile applications has come a long way. Keeping security a point of consideration within your mobile app architecture can benefit you a great deal in the future.

Security helps protect your data, and implementing encryption HTTPS is a significant way to improve security, but as we know, the internet is a basic need. Wireless networks, cloud-based servers, and business websites are well-known entry points for hackers. A good architecture helps prevent them all at the inception stage only.

Elements of a Mobile App Architecture

When developing your business applications, it is important to consider creating a robust architecture that can withstand harsh conditions. Here are a few elements that can make your mobile app architecture secure and efficient.

Internet Bandwidth

When developing your application during the software development lifecycle, your app will face issues such as connectivity issues or when there will be no connectivity at all. Your business app architecture should consider situations with even no network conditions. Based on that, you must design the data access, mechanism, caching, and state management, keeping the worst-case scenarios in mind.

Device Type

Not all devices are the same, and to build a robust mobile app architecture, you should consider the device and the hardware specifications you aim to target. You must consider factors such as screen size, resolutions, memory, CPU, storage, and other aspects of the target devices and the development environment and tools. As your application depends on the device features and hardware to work efficiently, getting the details of the device running your application is crucial.

User Interface

The ideal user interface and user experience also affect the efficiency of your business application architecture. When developing your mobile application architecture diagram, remember that you want to keep the users engaged and deliver a seamless user experience. Considering the aspects of UI/UX when creating your business application architecture will ensure that your end-user remains engaged with the app and that the user interfaces resonate with the user’s psychology.

Push Notifications or Real-Time Updates

Every app has different needs depending on the industry and type of application. While finalizing your mobile app architecture diagram, you must ensure that real-time updates or push notifications would be a better option. Real-time updates are a great choice but are not economical and drain more battery and data. At the same time, push notifications drain less battery but are a decent option depending on the application requirements.

Different Layers of Mobile App Development Architecture

Generally, mobile application development can be organized into distinct layers: presentation, business, and data. Let’s briefly understand each layer of the mobile application architecture example.

Presentation Layer

The Presentation layer comprises the components of the User Interface and UI processes. ( Views and Controllers). The ideal objective of this layer is to check the accuracy and presentation of the mobile application to the end-users. This includes significant aspects such as colors, themes, fonts, etc. At this stage, the team of app developers decides each of the application’s presentation techniques, features, and location.

However, while developing this layer, developers first need to determine an accurate client type that is adaptable and cooperative with the infrastructure. As the name says, this layer focuses entirely on presenting the application to the end-user.

Business Layer

As the name says, the business layer focuses entirely on the business front. To be more precise, this layer concentrates on how businesses present themselves to end-users. This layer involves business components, workflows, and entities under two layers, namely the Service and Domain model layers.

While the domain model layer denotes knowledge and expertise connected to a certain problem domain, the service model layer elaborates a fundamental array of application functions that will eventually be available to end-users and clients in the mobile application architecture. As it is directly presented to the end-users, every little detail must be top-notch.

The business layer indicates the base of the mobile application. You can remotely deploy the business logic layer on the user and backend server, reducing the overall load. (the load exists because of the limited amount of resources available on mobiles)

Data Access Layer‍

Right after the business layer, the data layer comes to the forefront. Built using an ingenious mix of data access components, data utilities, and service agents, this stage considers all data-related problems. The data access layer fulfills all the unique application needs, facilitating secured data transactions.

As this layer has a high chance of scaling up in the future, it is important to devote some time to it. One significant factor to consider before designing this layer is choosing the appropriate data format, thereby putting a robust validation technique in place. This protects your application from any random invalid data input.

Before tackling the three layers of the enterprise mobile application architecture diagram, businesses first need to understand that there are three components of two main subheads: the Network Layer and the Persistent Layer. While the network layer is held accountable for managing all networking calls, the persistent layer offers simplified and easy access to each significant piece of data, thereby storing it in the backend or persistent storage.

Mobile Application Architecture - Examples

Different patterns exist for various platforms and operating systems when developing your mobile app architecture design. Your mobile application architecture can help vary them based on the types of users or the platforms you aim to target. Comparing the Android and iOS app architectures, the Android applications include multiple app components such as fragments, activities, content providers, and services. It requires a proper manifest file that declares the components. iOS, on the other hand, places its applications in the IPA container or the Bundle directory, where all the application data is compressed and packed. A few of the most common modern architectures are:

Native Application And Architecture

If budget is not a constraint, a native mobile application architecture diagram is a great choice for your business application development. This architecture requires you to develop separate applications for both iOS and Android platforms. Besides delivering higher functionality and performance, native application architectures allow you to leverage the platform-specific functionalities fully and, based on that, deliver exceptional user experience.

?Custom Mobile App Architecture
Custom Mobile App Development Architecture is extremely cost-effective, affordable, and reliable. It holds the capacity to target a wide range of audiences. You can access the app on iOS and Android or separately for specific audiences. Custom app architecture is reasonable as the clients must pay for the only set of audiences they wish to target.

?Android Mobile App Architecture
With the evolution of application development, using a clean architecture for mobile app development is ideal to achieve the best operation. With the Android mobile application architecture diagram, your application becomes free of databases, frameworks, etc. If we go back to the past, developers did not possess any libraries to work with the network. Thus, AsyncTask was undoubtedly an essential component that led to the development and creation of Android system architecture diagram principles.

?iOS Mobile App Architecture
The iOS Mobile application architecture diagram uses two languages, Objective-C and Swift, to develop your native iOS applications. Though there are no guidelines for Android for iOS app development, there are specific guides for developing your iOS applications. Ideally, a standard iOS mobile app architecture is divided into 4 major parts. These include,

• Interface Level: Also referred to as the Cocoa Touch, the interface level has many widely and precisely used elements to develop multiple interfaces. Additionally, the Cocoa Touch provides information about the layers that users provide.
• Media Level: The media level consists of all the tools for processing several media formats.
• Core Services: Core services offer direct access to databases and file controls.
• Core OS: Also referred to as the Kernel Level, the Core OS level works directly and precisely with the file system. It even monitors and controls the credibility and soundness of the certificates (the apps own all these certificates). It consists of low-level access to all the system elements. This Kernel Level is accountable for the security maintenance of the entire system.

When used to build a quality application for mobile architecture, data conversion, and business logic can be sent to the model.

To achieve a high-quality iOS mobile app architecture, you must add an MVC(Massive View Controller) and its prototypes. MVC is entirely dedicated to the view life cycle.

To sum up, the ideal responsibility of the view is to send/convey actions straight away to the controller. IOS developers must understand that View Controller is a mere data source. Additionally, it is a point to initiate and reject the server requests.

Hybrid Mobile Application Architecture

These mobile applications are a hybrid of the native and the web applications. They possess a native app shell within which web-based content is loaded. You can leverage tech stacks like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build hybrid applications. Also, these applications can access the hardware features of a mobile application. The hybrid mobile apps use a single codebase for different mobile platforms therefore, a single hybrid app will function on different platforms, including Android or iOS.

Cross-platform Application Architecture

The cross-platform application architecture is a great choice when you are tight on your budget. Having your mobile app architecture built on the multi-platform architecture offers a cost-effective and robust solution to developing your business application. You can go for the React Native or Flutter mobile architecture, amongst the leading tech stacks for cross-platform app development. With their code once and use anywhere approach, you can build robust application architecture with optimal performance.

How To Choose The Right Architecture For You?

Follow a set of tips to figure out the ideal architecture for your mobile app. Below are nine ultimate tips for analyzing your app architecture right. Let’s have a look!

1. Target Audience Analysis

Identify your target audience’s preferences and analyze their preferences and demands. IOS and Android platforms have specific target groups, markets, user bases, and technological capabilities. You should consider the scope of the market distribution into account. This detailed analysis will help you easily conclude which platform to build your app and what UX you need to offer.

2. Experience of Users' Expectations

Step into the shoes of a customer and analyze what experience you expect from an app. If you need an enterprise app, ensure it has Cross-platform compatibility instead of a captivating experience because employees must run the application on several platforms. In the case of a consumer app, it must support all the device’s capabilities besides delivering an outstanding user experience.

3. Key Functionalities

Identify the key requirements. Do consumers prefer content? Or do you wish to engage with the app to access or manage tasks and files offline? Ideally, content consumption can be managed by a Cross-platform app or mobile web-based solution. The app requires an intuitive interface for managing tasks and accessing files, calling for a native-based solution. For offline access, leveraging the native frameworks into native apps works just as fine.

4. Chief Platform To Focus On

If your application focuses on a single platform, build a native app. This will help you in delivering the finest user experience. If you need to focus on all platforms, go for mobile Web apps built with the help of HTML5 integrated with frameworks such as Sencha Ext JS or jQuery Mobile. Another excellent way to deliver a decent app experience is to build PWA with ReactJS, Ionic, AngularJS, Knockout, etc.

5. Offline App Functionality

Offline functionality is a crucial aspect that determines the ultimate user experience. Regarding offline capacities, you might probably think of native apps. Even though PWAs offer precise offline capacities, they are entirely platform-dependent. Hence, to maximize PWAs’ potential, consider the data found in the audience analysis regarding the platform usage of your customer/target audience.

6. Industry-Specific Demands/Needs

Determining industrial requirements is vital to selecting the accurate mobile app architecture. Hence, when you notice your candidates searching for a fashion, it is evident that your web app link will pop up on their mobile browser. You can even prefer a native app to interact with your existing customers, thereby retaining and providing them with a phenomenal shopping experience.

7. Development Time Frame

Having a time limitation is important. Besides being the fastest solution to engage with a wider audience, you can easily concentrate on rolling out native apps to provide an exceptional experience on chief platforms.

8. Development Team Skillset

Evaluate your team’s skills in mobile app development architecture. Native app development demands expertise in Objective-C and Swift for iOS, as well as Kotlin and Java for Android. Developers proficient in HTML and JavaScript can handle most mobile app development frameworks for hybrid apps, but training is necessary if they lack these skills.

9. Cost of Ownership

The total cost of mobile app development, support, and maintenance relies on the nature of your chosen development architecture. While native apps for various platforms are expensive, mobile web apps are the most affordable and least expensive. However, ensure you don’t forget to weigh the benefits of the app architecture irrespective of its cost to analyze your ROI.

Conclusion

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How many layers does mobile app development architecture consist of?

The mobile app development architecture diagram consists of three layers: the data layer, the business layer, and the presentation layer.

Which factors should be considered when building architecture for mobile apps?

Before building the architecture of your mobile app, you must focus on this architecture’s best practices like deciding on the UI of your mobile app, selecting the appropriate navigation method, checking how much Internet Speed is required, and deciding on the device type for your mobile application and the operating system.

How many different types of mobile app architectures are available?

Here are the different types of mobile app development architecture:

• Custom or Native Mobile App Architecture
• Mobile Web Application Architecture
• Cross-platform application architecture
• Native application architecture

What are the Mobile app architecture patterns?

Here are the four mobile application design patterns:

• MVC: Model-View-Controller
• MVP: Model-View-Presenter
• MVVM: Model-View-ViewModel
• VIPER: View-Interactor-Presenter-Entity-Router

How do you create a great mobile app design?

An ideal app design is developed in three stages:

• Ignition- Setting Goals, Making Plans, and Research
• Design & Development- wireframe, feedback, & develop
• Testing & Launch