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Offshore mobile development is becoming more popular than ever before for many reasons we’ll explain here. Many of the biggest companies in the world, from Apple to Tesla to Microsoft, have built large mobile app development hubs in Eastern Europe and Asia. But why do so many companies want to hire offshore mobile app developers instead of hiring developers locally? Let’s look at the reasons.
What is offshore mobile app development?
Onshore development is when a company outsources a development project to a company based within the bounds of its own country. So, if a company is based in the US and hires an outsourced agency in the US, they are onshoring. If they hire a team in Canada or China, or India, they are offshoring. Offshore development is the process of outsourcing the development of mobile applications to another country to get the work done at a lower cost and in a shorter time frame.
In general, you can use offshoring in the following ways:
- Using offshore consultants to refine the ideation phase of your project and assist with budgeting.
- Hiring a team of experienced developers to initiate the software journey and build the features you require.
- Using offshore developers to maintain and support the app after it’s been built.
Offshore mobile app development comes with several risks and benefits.
What are the benefits of hiring an offshore mobile app development company?
Moving mobile development offshore will have several benefits for your business. Let’s look at a few.
Cost
One of the principal reasons companies move offshore is because it’s cheaper to develop your app offshore. There are several ways you can save money. Firstly, there is no need to provide your developers with equipment or premises to work from – everything is supplied, so you don’t need to invest in these assets yourself. There are no hefty recruitment fees, vetting fees, or commissions to be paid to recruitment companies.
The offshore agency has a full staff component of highly skilled developers you can rely on. Some even let you handpick your team. The cost of these developers is highly favorable as well. A developer in the US may charge anywhere from $60 to $120 per hour for their time, while a developer with the same skills (or higher) in China or Ukraine won’t charge more than $30. That means you can cut your development costs down by half or even more.
Skills
Sometimes finding developers with the right skills is just too difficult inshore. Developers with rare skills can work anywhere in the world and are paid large salaries by big tech companies that start-ups find hard to compete with. In other cases, large tech companies like Amazon or eBay open up big development hubs and snap up almost all of the developers in the area to staff them. By considering developers from other nations, you widen your talent pool without compromising on skills. Many of these outsourcing developers have worked on rich and varied projects, which means they come to the table with great skills and experience that will benefit your project.
Speed and Scale
Finally, these offshore agencies offer you speed and scale that an in-house team just can’t provide. If you don’t need developers anymore, you can cut them loose, and they’ll move on to other projects. If you need more team members to ramp up your project, you can hire them. There’s no need to pay severance or worry about the impact on team culture. You can scale up or down as required. You can also get started quite quickly because there is no lengthy recruitment, contracting, and vetting requirements. You can get started in a matter of weeks while your agency assembles the dream time and briefs them according to your needs.
Be warned: there are a few pitfalls to consider. Make sure that the team you choose is located in a favorable time zone and is able to communicate well in English. It’s a good idea to interview a few agencies until you find the right one.
But if you take your time, do your research, and find the right team, offshore mobile development is the best way to get your software project off the ground in a cost-effective way.
