Mercury interview with Rusty Mitchell and Kelly Merrell

Nashville is home to a world-class iOS and Android app development company, Mercury Intermedia. They have built native apps for well-known brands like Red Bull, Comcast, TED, The Washington Post and many more. I had the pleasure of interviewing Rusty Mitchell, VP of Design, and Kelly Merrell, VP of Engineering for Android.

In my interview, I found out that Mercury first began in a completely different industry and then did a major pivot into the world of building apps. Rusty and Kelly shared the insights they’ve learned from building native apps over the years. They also shared their thoughts on Progressive Web Apps and whether or not PWAs would be replacing native apps in the near future. The interview covered the following topics:

• How Mercury went from being a printing company to building native mobile apps for some of the world’s most well-known brands.
• When and why should companies outsource app development instead of doing it in-house?
• Should companies build native apps or use a mobile UI framework like Google Flutter to build a single app for many platforms?
• Are mobile app makers considering the creation of Progressive Web Apps versus making native apps?