Introducing Our Expert

This week, we sat down to chat with Imre Kaszab, a HighCircl expert, who specializes in creating mobile applications, with more than 10 years in the industry. His fascination with mobile apps started at a university hackathon - that’s when he fell in love with Android development.

Since then, he has mastered iOS development and eventually transitioned to cross-platform solutions, specifically Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP). He is a true expert, focused on process automation, efficient delivery, and modularizing code.

He speaks eagerly about a new Hungarian app he worked on, which can save lives by sending push notifications to donors based on the blood types most urgently needed by hospitals. His passion for projects with a cause is palpable; he lights up with enthusiasm when he talks about them.

Previously, Imre worked at Supercharge, a firm recognized by the Financial Times and Deloitte, and at Pulselive, a UK-based digital sports media technology company.

What is Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP)?

KMP is a cross-platform solution for writing mobile applications. It was introduced by JetBrains in 2017, and we’ve seen companies writing production-ready apps with it since its beta versions.

JetBrains released the stable version in late 2023, and since then, its community has been growing rapidly, with libraries even being ported from other frameworks. Its success is undeniable.

To understand why KMP is so powerful, we need to understand the problem it solves. Traditionally, development teams writing native applications (we’ll focus on Android and iOS) must build the UI and write the business logic twice - once for each platform. This creates room for error, and teams need to expend extra effort to keep the versions in sync. Furthermore, businesses need to hire engineers for both platforms.

Cross-platform frameworks aim to solve this by allowing developers to write code once and deploy it to both platforms. In theory, this means a unified codebase, fewer developers, lower expenses, and overall, less headache.

When KMP first came out, its primary purpose was to share the business logic in a common codebase - which was already a huge win. But developers know there’s more to an app than that: views, viewmodels, event handling, push messages, and so on. It saved a lot of time, but teams still had to write the UI for Android and iOS separately.

Then, JetBrains introduced Compose Multiplatform. By using Compose - Android’s modern toolkit for building UIs - you can now build entire apps in Kotlin for both platforms. This gives you a shared business logic layer and a shared UI layer, resulting in two fully functional apps from a single codebase. This technology is a gamechanger.

Q: I remember when PhoneGap, Ionic, and Xamarin used to be the buzz. How is KMP different?

A: Probably the biggest factor is that Google officially supports KMP. That’s huge because they provide official documentation, examples, and guides on how to use the framework for the best possible outcome.

Another key difference is the community. Even though this is a relatively new framework that just recently became stable, it has a large and active community. When you run into an issue, you’ll find people who are eager to help you solve it.

One of KMP’s greatest advantages is its interoperability, which allows developers to share code across platforms with remarkable flexibility. It also makes migration easier since you can adopt it incrementally.

Q: The cross-platform space is crowded. An established player like Flutter also offers a single codebase for UI and logic. Isn't KMP just late to the party?

A: That's a fair question. While Flutter is a fantastic framework, KMP's philosophy is different and, for many, more powerful. Like I mentioned, the biggest advantage is interoperability with native code. You aren't locked into an all-or-nothing framework. You can start by sharing just one small piece of logic in an existing native app. This allows for gradual adoption, which is a huge benefit for established projects.

Furthermore, because Compose uses the platform's native UI components, you often get a look and feel that is indistinguishable from a true native app, without relying on a third-party rendering engine. It offers native performance with shared logic, which is the best of both worlds.

Q: This sounds perfect. What’s the catch? Are there any drawbacks?

A: Apple doesn’t officially support the technology, which means it can be harder to debug and solve issues on iOS. Aside from this inconvenience, performance isn't perfectly optimized yet. You’ll likely find that your app requires more memory than its native iOS counterpart.

Also, some native features, like interacting with maps or the device’s camera, still require some platform-specific code.

Thankfully, given the vibrant community and the buzz around the technology, none of these are deal-breakers. They are unlikely to hold back KMP's progress.

Q: Who is this technology for?

A: It’s easier to say who it’s not for. If your business only ever plans to support Apple's platforms (iOS and macOS), then you should stick with their native technologies. For almost any other case in 2025, I don’t see a strong reason to choose another cross-platform option over KMP.

Q: What are the benefits for clients and development teams?

A: In short: you save time and money. With a single, shared codebase for both business logic and UI, you need fewer developers and less time to ship new features.

Maintenance is easier, too. You only need to find and fix a bug in one codebase, which can cut maintenance time significantly (assuming the bug would have existed on both native platforms).

Q: Any advice for developers looking to learn KMP?

A: Just jump right in. Android developers will have a fairly easy time learning it, since they already use Kotlin and often Compose. iOS developers might face a steeper learning curve, but Kotlin and Swift are syntactically similar, as are Compose and SwiftUI - both are declarative UI toolkits.

Overall, despite some early challenges, I recommend KMP for all new projects. Hopefully, Apple will recognize its benefits and offer official support in the future.

About HighCircl Tech Talk

Tech Talk is a weekly series of interview-format articles discussing important technological changes and news. Each week, we go deep into tech stacks and best practices by chatting with an expert.