Can I use Unity to develop a mobile non-game app?

Such as a social network type app. Me and my friend are very comfortable with Unity after using it for quite a bit this year and I've seen some people say it's possible to make non-game apps but they didn't specifically mention it was on mobile. I assume it's not that bad because you can export your projects to mobile platforms. I was intending to use the whole canvas thing and assumed it would work because our 2D games have run so smoothly. I also assumed that NGUI (Next Gen UI on Asset Store) is just a more 'friendly' way to develop mobile apps with Unity I couldn't imagine a UI for asset creation and such would actually impact me that much. Also not really eager to dish out 90 odd quid for the NGUI.

EDIT: I have looked at quite a few threads on this topic but they were kind of out-dated.

 

What is difference between game and non-game ? And yes, you can. Maybe, your unity-app will have more size, as developed nativ, or it will need more performant device (in comparison with native app). Just try and see.
https://unity3d.com/showcase/gallery/non-games

 

yes.

Pros: you can release on Android & iOS easily.
Cons: the file size will be massive compared to a native Xcode app.

uGUI (Unity's native Canvas) is fairly similar to Xcode storyboards, it'll do all the touch input stuff for you. Theres a guide for getting set up here: https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/user-interface-ui

 

If you don't care about the larger file size, Unity works fine for developing non-game apps.

Here's an app I worked on and continue to work on. It uses NGUI since uGUI was not available when development started. There are some issues we run into occasionally, like memory and cpu usage on older devices.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.nasa.jsc.igoal.ISSResearchExplorer
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/space-station-research-explorer/id934070569?mt=8

We've also done a few non public apps with both NGUI and uGUI that are not games and they turned out great.

 

Wait KrayZLogic do you work at NASA? sorry for the off topic question but i've been wanting to work on an augmented reality social media app using Vuforia and i like using it on unity do you think a social media app could be made with unity.

 

Doubt we'll ever find out. They haven't logged on since November 2016.

 

ok