This year, there would be more mobile phone usage. With the growing number of mobile devices to meet different requirements, there are new trends that would prevail in the mobile app field.
More than 1 billion smart phones and 179 mobile apps are downloaded every year, thus mobile development is definitely one of the actively growing and innovative sector nowadays. The mobile app market is without doubt dominated by Google apps, social media and gaming applications. Furthermore, small and medium businesses are following the mobile trend.
MOBILE TREND IN 2017
This year is considered the mobile technology era. It is predicted that the number of mobile phone users would reach 4.77 billion this year. In 2016, there are 4.61 billion of them. Together with all the wide-spread use and growth of mobile applications, there would come new functionalities, features and even trends that would prevail in the mobile application industry.
7 TRENDS THAT DEFINE THE MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT FUTURE
1. WEARABLE DEVICES. In 2016, 101.9 million wearable devices were shipped. Smart wearable devices such as the Apple Watch and the Hololens of Microsoft shows upcoming change in computing and transition from basic to smart wearables. This opens new opportunities for application developers, vendors and accessory makers. The smart phone would be the hub of a personal-area network that consists of wearable gadgets, which include smart jewelry, on-body healthcare sensors, display devices, smart watches and various sensors embedded in shoes and clothes. The gadgets would communicate with mobile apps to deliver information in new ways and enable a huge range of services and products in areas like fitness, sport, fashion, healthcare and hobbies. Wearables connected with smart phones would influence the strategies of the next generation mobile app development.
2. IoT AND MOBILE-CONNECTED SMART OBJECTS. Gartner stated that there would be 26 billion connected devices in 2020, including several hundred smart objects like LED light bulbs, home appliances, toys, medical devices, sports equipment, controllable power sockets and more. The domestic smart objects would be part of the IoT and would communicate via an application on a smart phone or tablet. Tablets and smart phones server as remote controls that display and analyze information, interacting with social networks to monitor ‘things’ that could post or tweet, paying subscription services, updating object firmware and ordering replacement consumables. Furthermore, established organizations like enterprise software vendors such as SAP with its Internet of Things Solutions and the Intelligent Systems Service of Microsoft are adding IoT capabilities to their offerings.
3. MOTION AND LOCATION SENSING. Most mobile devices have location sensor capacities that use numerous positioning methods to provide various granularities of location data. Knowing a person’s location within a few meters is useful in providing highly important contextual services and information. Motion sensing applications are used in anti-theft, security, power-savings and games. Location sensing is useful in games, Geotagging, vehicle navigation and fitness applications. Applications with exploit precise indoor location at present use technologies, like imaging, Wi-Fi, geomagnetic and ultrasonic beacons. In the longer run, technologies like smart lighting would also be relevant. Precise indoor location sensing, along with mobile apps, would enable a new generation of very personalized information and services.
4. M-COMMERCE. Different analysts believe that positive trend in mobile purchases continue over the next four years since more and more consumers adapt M-Commerce. Boosting the popularity of Google Wallet and Apple Pay would facilitate purchases that use the mobile phones instead of credit or debit cards. This requires developers to build a mobile app, which could process transactions with no need for cash or physical debit or credit cards. Along with wearable device that could process payments, M-Commerce would take a different shape.
5. APPLICATION PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT. There are a couple of factors that lead to performance bottlenecks in application testing, for instance the diversity of mobile devices and non-deterministic nature of mobile networks. However, mobile monitoring tools and metrics, known collectively as APM or application performance management has improved quality assurance and testing. APM offers visibility into application behavior, delivers statistics on which OSs and devices are adopted as well as monitors user behavior in order to determine which application features are successfully exploited. With the enterprise infrastructures and app landscape shifting to the cloud, APM tools face more challenges to provide real performance benefits with virtual perimeters. Modern companies need robust tools that could monitor the resources utilize by apps, align performance with business processes and correlate the data with meaningful user insights.
6. ENTERPRISE MOBILE MANAGEMENT. Is a set of people, processes and technology that use mobile computing for simplifying businesses. The key dimensions of enterprise mobile management or EMM are app management, security and financial management, app containerization and wrapping and several elements of enterprise file sharing and synchronization. Such tools would grow in scope, mature and would eventually address a range of mobile management requirements across all operating systems, such as tablets, smart phones and personal computers. EMM therefore represents the convergence and future evolution of various mobile security, management and support technologies.
7. INNOVATIVE MOBILE USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN. Effective content and data display on the mobile user interface is vital for a sound user experience. Successful mobile app organizations, like Instagram, Houzz, Wunderlist and Pinterest have developed new patterns that depict interactive interfaces and intuitive deigns. Also, designers are building applications that could accommodate mobile challenges, like partial user interruption and attention. Apps must exploit technologies with novel features, like circular design pattern, interactive content layers, cards and content manipulation. The features create an ‘augmented reality’ by letting users interact with content in more detail. Leading consumer applications set high standards for user interface design, and all companies should master new work and skills with new partners for meeting the growing expectations of users.
Obviously, the mobile application industry, that’s already big is not going to stop growing. The number of mobile applications is constantly growing and the trend would continue this year and beyond 2017.