Technology stack for Web Application + Mobile Application

I am in process of building a web application + Mobile application (Android and iPhone to begin with). I know the functionality and can write functional specification. I haven't decided whether I should be build native apps or a mobile web app.

Since I will have a reusable functional开发者_运维知识库ity (used by web app as well as mobile apps), I should exposed core functionality as web services and consume it from views (Mobile, Web UI etc.)

My goal is to build faster. Application/platform should scale up well in future. I am low on budget, so am looking for open source or low-licensing fee stack (Java, LAMP, open source etc.).

I need suggestions on technology stack. Also if you have similar experience, let me know your experience.

Thanks a bunch.

I work on similar solution, ie. web-app + API + mobile apps and use:

• Server side: Python + Django + Piston (for making REST API).
• Client side: Native iPhone app (Android in the future)

I'm satisfied with my choice. Django allows to develop fast. Python is very expressive and quite fast (in terms of dynamic language). Piston lets you create REST API easily. All of these are free, of course.

Considering iPhone - a native app was a requirement, so I wasn't thinking about building mobile web apps.

It very much depends on the type of application you are talking about. From my company's experience and from listening to others, the choice whether to use native app or web app or hybrid app depends very much on the functionality you need to include.

One thing is logic, another is presentation.

Logic can usually reside on the server, but in case you need to work offline as well then at least some of this has to be done on the client. Then even if it is offline - you should decide if it is web app or native logic, but developing a web-browser complex offline logic which will be cross-platform might be more difficult sometimes than writing it twice natively. Really... So if offline is needed, I'd lean to native logic anyway. Otherwise you might think about appcelerator, but you will have big learning curve if you are used to web development. They say they are html + javascript but only about syntax - you have to learn the whole stack anyway.

Presentation - if you require simple list display with not a lot of graphical effects, not a lot of many pictures to browse through with simple few buttons, tabs, web is good to go - jquerymobile, phonegap are your friends there - phonegap especially if you need access to phone functions like camera or contacts. But if you need at least some level of smoothness, good user experience and something of a "wow" effect for the user there is no other way than a pure native applications - android and ios developed by joined multi-platform team (share concepts are more important than shared code IMHO).

For the backend - this might be pretty much everything, also depending on the functionality - how much other systems it should integrate with, how many users, what is the hardware infrastructure required, whether some cloud approach (google appengine, amazon) are considered etc. etc.