Originally published at rapidnative.com by Sanket Sahu.

What a mobile app development platform is, how the category went from MEAP to MADP to low-code to AI, and the eight questions that separate a good platform from an expensive detour.

If you have ever sat through an enterprise software review, you have heard someone ask which mobile app development platform the company should standardize on. The question sounds simple. The answers rarely are, because the category has been renamed four times in fifteen years, and the tools sold under the label range from visual workflow builders to raw frameworks to, now, AI that writes the whole app from a paragraph of text.

This guide untangles it. It covers what a mobile app development platform (MADP) actually is, where the term came from, the five kinds of platforms you will meet in 2026, and the questions that tell a good one from an expensive detour.…