Mobile application development has created a great buzz in almost every business domain, particularly after the advent of Smartphones. Indubitably, its demand has accentuated at a great pace and today, almost every business knows that how essential it is to possess a remarkable mobile presence.
Having said that, there is a question that keeps coming in my mind while striving to reap the benefits of the rapidly flourishing mobile app development. And it is, that although currently the mobile app development is helping in generating greater revenues, but is it sustainable? This is a common and important question for all the businesses who are investing their valuable time and money in it.
Fortunately, the answer is yes, since the analysts and researchers have depicted that mobile app development is rapidly rising and will become the most extensively used computing tool.
The current stats and analytics predict a bright and fortunate future for the mobile app development. Let’s see how.
- The number of Internet-enabled mobile devices are expected to cross 10 billion by the year 2016.
- The Android and iPhone flagships are the most preferred mobile platforms, with Android is possessing over 85% of the market share and iOS generating about 85% more revenue than Android.
- Half of the total cell phone owners use applications on their devices. It has been depicted that around 60% of the app users use their mobile applications regularly, and a quarter of them use the downloaded apps for over 30 minutes each day.
- Around 50% of the total app downloaders have invested in the premium applications.
- Apps revenue is rapidly increasing and is expected to only continue the same in future. Most interestingly, the mobile advertising revenue will accentuate by 400% across the globe.
- It has been observed that the gaming apps (over 60%) are most admired and downloaded apps from the app stores. And other most-liked applications include news apps, navigation apps, music apps, social networking apps and a lot more.
There are certain fields that are substantially gaining popularity with mobile application development. A few of them are listed below:
- Social networking – This app category has garnered great admiration among the consumers.
- Location-based services (LBS) – LBS are another growing category that offers users to fetch the desired information with utmost ease. It determines the current location of a device and provides an overwhelming list of options to choose from. These kind of services is highly praised by consumers.
- Mobile Commerce – For a streamline shopping experience, the m-commerce is substantially improving to cater to the advanced user’s demands.
- Mobile payment – The NFC enabled devices will accentuate the mobile payment services. Today, there are several NFC-enabled devices. Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus with Apple Pay facilitates mobile payment, other Smartphones are also expected to support the same in the future.
- Mobile search – It has been observed that even if a consumer is shopping from a brick and mortar store, he/she prefers mobile search either to determine the availability of the product or for comparing its price online. Thus, it can be said that mobile technology is dominant.
With the leap in user behavior and ever-evolving mobile technologies, some predictions can be made to the future of mobile app. Here are certain futuristic trends that can be anticipated.
- Journey of mobile applications from Smartphones to Cars: Indubitably, applications is the cornerstone of Smartphones, but the way applications are expanding their ground, soon you will have apps to operate your household appliance and other smart gadgets. In fact, there are some apps already available out there that are specifically designed to facilitate access to some Smart gadgets including wearable, car devices, Smart TV, washing machine and a lot more.
- Hybrid and cross-platform apps will rule the ground: According to the analysts Gartner and Forrester Research, more affordable Smartphones will be created to fit in the pocket of citizens belonging to the developing countries. And, to leverage the massively increasing mobile devices, more mobile apps will be required. This has further added to the hybrid and cross-platform mobile application development trends.
- Targeted apps will take over the apps serving multiple purposes: There is a plethora of applications in the app stores and these numbers are only expected to bloom in the future. Thus, finding the appropriate app from the app store will become a cumbersome task. Therefore, users would seek apps that serve a particular function in a precise and optimized fashion. Hence, targeted apps will be more preferred over multi-purpose applications.
- Mobile apps will augment business marketing strategies: The mobile apps are already being used to cater to the needs of diversified business domains. And, this trend will continue to accentuate in the future as well. They will be refined and polished to further help businesses to gather the valuable end-user’s information for making better marketing efforts.
- Inevitably moving towards smart apps: To become more compelling and intriguing to the consumers, businesses will integrate with the cloud applications. This will ultimately offer smart applications, with which there won’t be any need to remember much information. Because there will be more reliable and secure apps to do the job. The cloud infrastructure augments the development of smart apps and provide us an efficient resource. It will offer rich UX, offline mode accessibility and a lot more.
- Task- and user-specific mobile app for better UX: Task-specific apps will be in trend as the multi-purpose applications will be less preferred, plus there will be more apps targeting the user’s interests and location. It can surely leverage businesses to deliver an astounding performance by making the user experience more personal and specific.
- Parallax scrolling for rich visual appearance: The Parallax Scrolling is highly admired by both web and mobile users. There will be more applications with parallax scrolling to create a dynamic UX. It makes the applications more intuitive and engaging while displaying the content on a single page.
- Myriads of connected devices: The trend of connected devices has been already witnessed in the year 2014, and this is only expected to climb a notch higher in the future. From household appliance operated via mobile applications to the smart video consoles, the mobile technology will continue expanding with wearables and other advanced devices.
A few more examples to rest our case
- Educating the world through interesting games: It can be observed that the gaming apps are the most admired category in the app stores. And, this category features a slew of sub-categories as well. Thus, gaming apps can be a great option to minimize the social issues by spreading the relevant knowledge to the developing world. Whether it’s about child labor, family planning or any other social issue, with mobile apps one can efficiently reach those who don’t have a computer but a mobile phone. The rising trend of spreading the resourceful knowledge about such serious causes via the engaging gaming applications will ultimately leverage the economical development.
- Mobile devices adding to the global health care: Let’s consider an example. A few years back when the two African countries have faced disease outbreaks, the mobile solution has delivered a conspicuous result. It has augmented the disease respond method and thus, helped save numerous lives. And today, with the rising ubiquity of the mobile applications, it can do wonders in the health space. There can be apps to rapidly spread the health education, guidelines to prevent deadly diseases and so forth. Thus, can help boost the health care in the world.
- Direct feedbacks can make the system more robust: In the state of Karnataka, India a few years ago, a system was introduced to ensure better health care to the people. This system helps fetch the feedbacks straightaway from the ground level by allowing the citizens to report the absenteeism of the responsible workers via a mobile device. This way the culpable healthcare workers can be recognized and liable to some punishment. This is just another testament of mobile technology augmenting the country’s development.
Similarly, mobile applications can also help further improve the government system. There can be mobile apps to facilitate a secure feedback loop that will allow citizens to seamlessly submit the reports.
There are mobile apps offering instant first aid tips where there is no professional care during disasters. It can even help augment the knowledge base of people (from remote area as well as metropolitan area). Thus, to say that the advanced paradigm of sharing info and communicating can lead to great improvements won’t be an understatement.
Since, the emergence of mobile applications, the mobile app market is exponentially evolving. Along this, you can observe a dramatic improvement in the mobile platforms that have augmented mobile app development and taken it to the next level. Until the mobile technology is flourishing (which is currently happening at a rapid rate), the mobile app development will only continue to expand and deliver productive outcomes to the end users including both businesses and consumers.