4 Pros and Cons of Developing Mobile App in Kotlin Multiplatform

Mobile application development is undergoing a seismic shift, a key consideration for any Mobile App Development Agency. Did you know that cross-platform frameworks are projected to underpin over 70% of enterprise apps by 2025? For businesses, and Mobile App Development Agencies, aiming for agility and broad market reach, this trend isn’t just a statistic; it’s a clarion call to rethink traditional, siloed native development approaches. Among the contenders in this evolving landscape, Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM) emerges as a potent technology, a vital tool for a modern Mobile App Development Agency. But is it the right pathway for your next mobile venture, a crucial question for any Mobile App Development Agency?

This article provides an objective analysis of Kotlin Multiplatform, delineating its salient advantages and potential drawbacks, essential knowledge for a Mobile App Development Agency. We aim to equip you with the discernment needed to ascertain if KMM aligns with your project objectives in 2025 and beyond, a strategic decision for a Mobile App Development Agency. Let’s delve into the nucleus of this technology and ascertain its mettle, a key evaluation for a Mobile App Development Agency seeking to stay competitive.

What is Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM)?

Before we dissect the pros and cons, a succinct elucidation of Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile is prudent. KMM is not a “write-once, run-anywhere” panacea, but rather a pragmatic approach to cross-platform development. It allows developers to share business logic—that is, the core functionalities, data handling, and rules of your application—across diverse platforms like iOS and Android, while retaining native user interfaces. Imagine crafting the complex algorithms and network interactions just once in Kotlin, and then deploying this robust core to both Android and iOS apps.

Weighing the Scales: 4 Key Pros of Kotlin Multiplatform for Mobile App Development

Enhanced Code Reusability and Accelerated Development Cycles

One of the most persuasive arguments for adopting Kotlin Multiplatform is the profound amplification of code reusability. Instead of laboriously replicating business logic for each platform (Android in Java/Kotlin and iOS in Swift/Objective-C), KMM facilitates writing this logic once in Kotlin and seamlessly sharing it across both.

This paradigm shift has several far-reaching consequences:

• Reduced Development Time & Costs: The elimination of redundant coding translates directly into decreased development hours and consequently, diminished costs. For organizations operating under stringent budgetary or temporal constraints, this efficiency is invaluable. Instead of two independent teams duplicating efforts, a single, unified Kotlin codebase for the core logic streamlines the entire process.

• Increased Development Velocity: By circumventing the need to rewrite core functionalities, development teams can concentrate their efforts on crafting bespoke, platform-specific user interfaces and experiences. This focused approach not only accelerates development cycles but also allows for more iterative improvements and faster time-to-market.
• Consistency and Reduced Bug Probability: A shared codebase inherently fosters consistency across platforms. Changes and bug fixes applied to the common Kotlin module automatically propagate to both Android and iOS applications. This unified approach significantly minimizes the risk of platform-specific inconsistencies and reduces the probability of introducing platform-dependent bugs that can often plague entirely separate codebases.

This table underscores the quantitative benefits of Kotlin Multiplatform in terms of efficiency and reduced redundancy when juxtaposed with conventional native development paradigms.

Native Performance and User Experience Parity

• Native UI and UX Fidelity: KMM deliberately advocates for native user interface development. Android applications utilize native Android UI components, and iOS apps leverage UIKit or SwiftUI, ensuring adherence to platform design conventions and user expectations. This native presentation layer guarantees a fluid, performant, and platform-authentic user experience. Users are unlikely to discern that the application core is underpinned by cross-platform technology.

• Optimized Native Interoperability: Kotlin, the lingua franca of KMM, boasts seamless interoperability with both Java/Kotlin (for Android) and Objective-C/Swift (for iOS). This intrinsic interoperability allows Kotlin code to efficiently interact with native platform APIs and libraries. You can access device hardware features, utilize platform-specific libraries for tasks like image processing or augmented reality, and harness the full power of each operating system without impediment. This granular level of native integration ensures peak performance and access to the complete spectrum of platform capabilities.
• No Performance Penalties for Shared Logic: The shared Kotlin code is compiled to native binaries for each platform. For iOS, it compiles to native code via LLVM and interoperates seamlessly with Objective-C/Swift runtime. For Android, Kotlin code executes directly on the JVM. This avoids the performance overhead often associated with interpreted or virtualized cross-platform environments. The core logic in Kotlin executes with near-native performance characteristics.

Simplified Maintenance and Seamless Updates

• Unified Maintenance and Bug Fixes: With core logic consolidated within a shared Kotlin module, maintenance tasks and bug fixes become inherently more efficient. A single correction in the Kotlin codebase remediates the issue across both Android and iOS applications concurrently. This eliminates the need to apply the same fix in two disparate codebases, mitigating the risk of discrepancies and reducing overall maintenance overhead.

• Streamlined Feature Rollouts: When introducing new features or enhancements to an application, Kotlin Multiplatform facilitates a more synchronized and less cumbersome rollout process. New functionalities can be implemented once in the shared module and deployed to both platforms simultaneously, ensuring feature parity and consistent user experiences. This coordinated approach simplifies release management and reduces the complexities associated with managing divergent feature sets across platforms.
• Reduced Technical Debt Accrual: Maintaining separate codebases for Android and iOS invariably leads to technical debt divergence. As each codebase evolves independently, subtle discrepancies and inconsistencies can accumulate over time, making future maintenance and refactoring increasingly complex and expensive. Kotlin Multiplatform’s shared codebase minimizes this divergence, keeping the codebase more cohesive and reducing the accumulation of platform-specific technical debt.

Access to a Robust Kotlin Ecosystem and Future-Proofing

• Leveraging the Thriving Kotlin Ecosystem: Kotlin, as a language, has garnered substantial industry traction and enjoys a vibrant and expansive ecosystem. This ecosystem encompasses a wealth of libraries, frameworks, tools, and community support. KMM developers can leverage existing Kotlin libraries for tasks such as networking, serialization, data persistence, and more, accelerating development and benefiting from the collective wisdom and contributions of the Kotlin community.
• Interoperability with Existing Native Codebases: Kotlin Multiplatform does not necessitate a wholesale replacement of existing native Android or iOS codebases. It can be incrementally adopted. Existing native modules can coexist harmoniously with new Kotlin Multiplatform modules. This incremental adoption strategy mitigates risks and allows organizations to progressively integrate KMM into their workflows without disrupting existing projects or workflows. You can gradually migrate portions of your application to KMM, starting with non-UI core logic, and expand its adoption iteratively.
• Future-Oriented Technology Choice: Kotlin is championed and actively developed by JetBrains and Google. It is the preferred language for Android development. This robust backing and ongoing investment signal the long-term viability and relevance of Kotlin and Kotlin Multiplatform. By embracing KMM, you are aligning your technology stack with a language that is not only currently prominent but also strategically positioned for sustained growth and innovation in the mobile development arena. As Kotlin evolves and the KMM ecosystem matures, your applications built upon this technology are well-placed to benefit from future advancements and platform evolutions.

Navigating the Challenges: 4 Key Cons of Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile

Platform-Specific UI/UX Development Complexity

Although the native UI approach of KMM is a pro in terms of user experience, it simultaneously introduces a layer of complexity that needs careful consideration.

• Duplicated UI Development Effort: While business logic is shared, user interfaces must be crafted natively for each platform. This inherently means that UI/UX development efforts are still duplicated across Android and iOS teams. For applications with intricate and platform-distinct user interfaces, this might negate some of the time savings achieved by code sharing in the business logic layer. Projects requiring pixel-perfect, platform-idiosyncratic UIs might find the UI development aspect remains a substantial undertaking.

• Maintaining UI/UX Parity: Ensuring consistent user experiences across Android and iOS, despite developing native UIs independently, can introduce its own set of challenges. Teams must meticulously coordinate UI/UX design and implementation to maintain visual and functional harmony. Divergences in platform design guidelines and user interaction paradigms can make achieving perfect parity a non-trivial pursuit. Discrepancies in UI/UX can lead to user confusion and a perception of application incohesion.
• Potential for Feature Drift in UI Layer: Despite best intentions, platform-specific UI development can inadvertently lead to feature drift over time. As Android and iOS teams work in relative isolation on their respective UIs, there’s a risk of introducing subtle differences in functionality or user flows within the UI layer. Maintaining feature parity in the UI layer demands diligent coordination, rigorous testing, and robust communication between development teams.

Steeper Initial Learning Curve for Native Developers

For development teams deeply ingrained in native Android or iOS development, Kotlin Multiplatform can present a steeper initial learning curve compared to frameworks that abstract away more platform complexities.

• Need to Learn Kotlin and Multiplatform Concepts: Native developers comfortable in Java/Kotlin (Android) or Swift/Objective-C (iOS) must familiarize themselves with Kotlin as a language (if coming from Swift/Objective-C) and, crucially, grasp the nuances of Kotlin Multiplatform’s project structure, module configuration, and interop mechanisms. Understanding concepts like expect/actual declarations, platform modules, and Gradle configuration for KMM projects requires an initial investment in learning.

• Debugging and Platform Integration Complexity: Debugging cross-platform code that interacts with native platform APIs can sometimes be more intricate compared to debugging purely native applications. Understanding how to trace execution flows across Kotlin/Native boundaries, diagnose issues related to platform interop, and effectively utilize debugging tools for both Kotlin and native platforms requires augmented skill sets and a deeper understanding of the KMM architecture.
• Potential Tooling Immaturity in Early Adoption: While the KMM tooling ecosystem is continuously maturing, it might still be perceived as less mature or feature-rich compared to the well-established tooling landscapes for purely native Android or iOS development. Developers adopting KMM in its earlier stages might encounter tooling limitations or require workarounds for certain development tasks. This perception is constantly evolving as the KMM ecosystem expands.

Debugging and Platform Integration Complexities

• Interplay Between Shared and Native Code Debugging: Debugging issues that straddle the boundary between shared Kotlin code and native platform-specific code can sometimes be more challenging compared to debugging within a purely native environment. Tracing execution flow, isolating bugs, and leveraging debugging tools effectively across both Kotlin and native realms require a nuanced understanding of the KMM architecture and debugging capabilities across platforms.

• Platform-Specific Build and Configuration Issues: Managing build configurations and dependencies for both Android and iOS within a single KMM project can, in certain scenarios, introduce complexities. Gradle, while powerful, has a learning curve, and configuring multiplatform projects with platform-specific dependencies, build variants, and signing configurations requires meticulous attention to detail. Platform-specific build issues might occasionally arise, demanding platform-specific build expertise.
• Dependency Management in Multiplatform Context: Dependency management in KMM projects, while largely facilitated by Gradle and Kotlin’s dependency resolution mechanisms, can present nuances when dealing with platform-specific libraries or native dependencies. Ensuring compatible versions and resolving dependency conflicts across multiple platforms requires careful management and understanding of Gradle’s dependency management features within a multiplatform context.

Smaller Community and Evolving Ecosystem (Relative to Established Frameworks)

• Reduced Availability of Third-Party Libraries and Components: The KMM ecosystem, while growing, currently offers a less extensive catalog of ready-made third-party libraries and UI components compared to the more mature ecosystems of React Native or Flutter. For specific functionalities or specialized UI requirements, developers might need to develop custom solutions or contribute to expanding the KMM library ecosystem themselves. The pace of library development in the KMM space is rapidly increasing, but currently, breadth may be less than that of longer-established frameworks.

• Smaller Online Community and Support Network (Currently): The online community and readily available support network for Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile, although rapidly expanding, is still smaller compared to the massive communities surrounding React Native or Flutter. Finding readily available answers to niche questions, accessing a vast pool of community-contributed code examples, or readily engaging with a huge online community for real-time support may currently be somewhat less prevalent for KMM than for frameworks with significantly larger and longer-established communities.
• Evolving Tooling and Documentation Landscape: The tooling and documentation for Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile are under continuous evolution and refinement. While substantial progress has been made, certain aspects of tooling or documentation might still be less comprehensive or polished compared to the more mature ecosystems of rival frameworks. Developers adopting KMM should be prepared to navigate an ecosystem that is actively growing and improving, potentially encountering occasional gaps or needing to contribute to the ongoing evolution of tooling and documentation.

Key Takeaways

• Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile offers compelling advantages in terms of code reusability, native performance, streamlined maintenance, and leveraging the Kotlin ecosystem.
• KMM facilitates significant gains in development efficiency by sharing business logic while retaining native UI/UX.
• Potential drawbacks include complexity in platform-specific UI development, a steeper initial learning curve for native developers, and debugging intricacies across cross-platform and native boundaries.
• The KMM ecosystem, while growing rapidly, is currently smaller than that of more established frameworks but boasts a vibrant and dedicated community.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I reuse my existing native Android code in Kotlin Multiplatform?

Yes, Kotlin Multiplatform allows you to seamlessly integrate existing native Android (Java/Kotlin) libraries and modules into your KMM projects. You can leverage your prior investments in native Android code and progressively adopt KMM components, enabling incremental migration and code reuse.

Does KMM truly provide native application performance for mobile?

Indeed, Kotlin Multiplatform applications deliver performance that is indistinguishable from native apps. Shared Kotlin code is compiled to native binaries for each platform. Native UIs are built using platform-specific UI frameworks, ensuring optimal responsiveness and user experience.

What types of mobile apps are ideal candidates for Kotlin Multiplatform?

Applications with complex business logic, data-intensive features, or those requiring consistency across platforms are well-suited for Kotlin Multiplatform. Examples include e-commerce apps, banking apps, social media clients, and utility apps.

Is Kotlin Multiplatform suitable for teams without Kotlin experience?

While prior Kotlin experience is advantageous, teams with strong native Android or iOS backgrounds can successfully adopt Kotlin Multiplatform. Kotlin is relatively easy to learn, particularly for those with Java or Swift experience. The learning curve primarily involves grasping the multiplatform paradigm and associated tooling.

What are the primary tools for developing in Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile?

The core tools include IntelliJ IDEA or Android Studio with the Kotlin plugin, the Kotlin compiler, Gradle for build automation, and platform-specific SDKs (Android SDK and Xcode for iOS). JetBrains actively enhances the tooling to streamline KMM development workflows.