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Summary – Facing the explosion of mobile devices and pressure on costs and complexity, Kotlin Multiplatform unifies business logic in a shared module, compiled via JVM and LLVM to ensure native performance on Android and iOS while preserving Compose UI and SwiftUI. This approach accelerates development cycles, reduces duplication, facilitates testing and incremental migrations, and improves functional consistency and maintainability. Solution: targeted audit, migration via shared modules, and implementation of a CI/CD pipeline.
In just a few years, Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) has earned its stripes and is now stable and production-ready. With 7 billion smartphones projected by 2025, companies are looking to cut mobile development costs and complexity without sacrificing native performance. KMP offers a hybrid solution: a shared Kotlin codebase for business logic compiled natively on Android and iOS, while preserving each platform’s own UI. In this article, we review the main benefits of Kotlin Multiplatform, illustrated by concrete use cases, to show how this technology can transform your mobile strategy.
Sharing Business Logic for Faster Development
Reusing a single Kotlin codebase eliminates redundancy and accelerates development cycles. Compilation to JVM and LLVM ensures uncompromised native execution.
Reusing Business Logic
Kotlin Multiplatform centralizes all business logic in a shared module, avoiding duplication of algorithms or data handling for each platform. This reuse yields functional consistency and fewer bugs caused by code divergence.
In practice, the same synchronization or validation service can be written once and deployed to both Android and iOS, significantly reducing maintenance overhead. Fixes are applied in a single place before being rolled out to all users.
This approach also simplifies unit testing. The same test suites written in Kotlin run on the JVM and within an LLVM environment for iOS, ensuring the business logic behaves identically everywhere.
Cross-Compilation to JVM and LLVM
The core of a Multiplatform project relies on two backends: the JVM for Android and LLVM (via Kotlin/Native) for iOS. Kotlin/Native generates native machine code, fully leveraging LLVM compilation optimizations for each targeted architecture.
Thanks to this cross-compilation, there’s no extra interpreter or virtual machine on iOS: the Kotlin code is directly embedded in the app alongside Swift components. Performance and integration with native frameworks remain optimal.
Project configuration is handled with Gradle, using dedicated plugins to manage shared sources and native targets. This user-friendly structure simplifies the setup of a single CI/CD pipeline, reducing orchestration effort and minimizing configuration errors.
Practical Example in Finance
An asset management company adopted Kotlin Multiplatform to unify its mobile financial reporting tools. Before introducing KMP, two separate teams maintained distinct implementations of the same performance calculations.
Switching to a shared module, the team cut the average implementation time of a new calculation rule by 40%. Presentation discrepancies between Android and iOS disappeared, ensuring a consistent user experience.
This case demonstrates that centralizing business logic not only enhances the final product’s quality but also improves code governance and accelerates time-to-market.
Preserving Native Interfaces for an Optimal User Experience
Kotlin Multiplatform offers the flexibility to leverage Compose UI on Android and SwiftUI on iOS. Teams retain full control over the native interface while sharing the same logic layer.
Compose Multiplatform for Android and Desktop
Compose Multiplatform extends Kotlin’s declarative UI library to multiple targets, including Android and desktop, building on Compose for Android and Compose for Desktop. This convergence enables interface component reuse while preserving customization freedom.
Developers can define adaptive visual components that automatically adjust to different screen sizes, all while sharing the same code. The declarative syntax of Compose accelerates iterations and strengthens visual consistency across the application.
Architecturally, these components seamlessly connect to KMP modules, ensuring the business logic drives the views uniformly, regardless of the execution environment.
SwiftUI for Native Rendering on iOS
On iOS, SwiftUI remains the preferred framework for building modern, responsive interfaces. KMP interacts with SwiftUI through Kotlin/Native code bindings, exposing shared functions as Swift libraries.
This allows iOS designers and engineers to work in a familiar environment, leveraging the latest SwiftUI features without constraint, while benefiting from consistent logic with Android.
Integration is seamless: variables and data structures defined in Kotlin/Native map to Swift types, minimizing manual conversions and reducing the risk of errors when calling shared APIs.
Optimizing Cross-Team Collaboration
The clear separation between the logic layer and the presentation layer encourages team specialization. Kotlin developers handle algorithms and API communication, while UI specialists focus on interactions and visual design.
This workflow minimizes merge conflicts and simplifies branch coordination. Each team contributes within a well-defined scope without stepping on each other’s toes.
A healthcare services provider tested this workflow by assigning one team to the shared API layer and two separate teams for Android and iOS. The result was faster update releases and a notable reduction in UI-related bug reports.
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A Mature Technology Adopted by Major Players
Kotlin Multiplatform benefits from JetBrains’ support and a vibrant open source ecosystem. Renowned references attest to its production robustness.
JetBrains Ecosystem and Support
JetBrains maintains the Kotlin compiler and provides Gradle and IntelliJ plugins dedicated to Multiplatform configuration. The language’s official support and frequent updates reassure about the project’s longevity.
Moreover, the open source community actively contributes to compatible third-party libraries, such as Ktor for networking or SQLDelight for persistence. This wealth of resources covers most technical needs without resorting to proprietary solutions.
Best practices and migration guides are regularly published by JetBrains and the community, easing adoption for teams new to the technology and ensuring a solid foundation for new projects.
Use Cases from Large Enterprises
Several international companies, including major streaming and finance players, have adopted Kotlin Multiplatform. They report significant reductions in maintenance efforts and more consistent functionality across platforms.
These organizations also highlight how easily they integrated new features thanks to KMP’s modularity and the decoupling of logic and interface.
The general feedback is unanimous: delivering a fully native end-to-end experience while benefiting from shared code efficiency boosts competitiveness against fully cross-platform frameworks.
Example from a Public Organization
A cantonal administration deployed a citizen consultation app for Android and iOS, leveraging Kotlin Multiplatform for data analysis and authentication. Previously, two external teams had developed separate versions, causing operational overhead and security inconsistencies.
By migrating to KMP, the administration consolidated authentication and encryption processes in a single core, enhancing compliance with GDPR-like regulations while reducing technical discrepancies.
This project shows that a public entity can improve responsiveness and control IT expenditure with a hybrid approach, without compromising the native experience for end users.
Pragmatic Migration Strategies and Scalability
Kotlin Multiplatform integrates gradually with existing architectures, minimizing risk. Coexistence with native code enables a measured scalability path.
Incremental Approach on Existing Projects
To avoid blocking ongoing deadlines, it’s possible to migrate one module at a time to KMP. Teams often start with the networking layer or data model management, then progressively extend the migration to other functional domains.
This incremental strategy delivers quick ROI since the first shared modules immediately benefit both platforms without waiting for a full rewrite.
The Agile methodology fits perfectly with this approach: each sprint can include one or two migration tasks, validated via advanced Agile methods and non-regression tests on each target.
Coexistence with Native Code
KMP does not eliminate the need for existing Java, Kotlin, or Swift code. On the contrary, it coexists within the same project through Gradle modules for Android and Swift packages for iOS.
Teams can continue using their proven libraries and frameworks while adding features developed in Kotlin Multiplatform. This mix ensures product stability and offers a gradual learning curve.
Once KMP skills are mastered, it’s easier to decide whether to extend this technology to other parts of the application without global architectural constraints.
Illustration in the Manufacturing Industry
An industrial group started by migrating its data synchronization module between the factory and its mobile monitoring app. This critical feature was developed in KMP and deployed to Android and iOS within a single sprint.
The migration reduced mobile engineers’ workload on synchronization by half, freeing resources to enhance real-time performance analysis features.
This proof-of-concept paved the way for gradually extending KMP to other modules, demonstrating rapid skill acquisition and tangible improvements in development timelines.
Kotlin Multiplatform: Toward a Unified, High-Performance Mobile Strategy
Kotlin Multiplatform enables sharing business logic between Android and iOS while maintaining native performance through LLVM and JVM compilation. Its open source ecosystem and JetBrains support ensure stability and rapid skill adoption.
Real-world examples show that an incremental migration, combined with modular architecture, improves time-to-market and reduces maintenance costs without sacrificing Compose UI or SwiftUI interfaces.
Our Edana experts support organizations in pragmatically implementing Kotlin Multiplatform, from auditing existing architectures to integrating shared modules, to build an agile and sustainable digital strategy.
