Whether it is about shopping, ordering your favourite food, saving money, hiring a cab or any other routine activity online, which devicedo you pick up at an instant to carry all such activities? Your Smartphone, right! Well, it is same with every one of us. Our cellular device has emerged as a real friend in need and is playing a crucial role in simplifying our daily tasks, changing your outlook towards information. It is not at all wrong to say that technology of mobile is growing at the speed of light and the apps have become an integral part of the digital ecosystem. In fact, these apps are progressing to make ubiquitous presence. However, staying up-to-date with the latest trends of mobile app development has become order rather than merely an option.

Let’s have a look on the top 15 development trends of the mobile app market:

Faster Mobile Development:

Companies are going through a tough phase in pacing up with the increasing demand for mobile apps. With these progressive demands, businesses are competing to launch their products and services faster than anyone else. The main objective for mobile app developers would be to reduce the duration of the development lifecycles and cutting down the time gap that lies between ideation and launch. You can expect to view advanced rapid app development tools as well as frameworks in the market. In fact, many companies are looking forward to introducing solutions that can cater to the consumer’s requirement of launching their app faster than anyone else like Multicore JIT, Gesture Search, and SwipePad etc. Such solutions for mobile development were originated with the very idea of delivering consistent value to the customers at every step while developing their app utilising the key components including rapid launches and quick reach to the market.

Driven With Cloud Technology:

Booming cloud technology is expected to play a vital role in the app development revolution. There has been anupward shift in the usage of mobile devices. This tends to make app developers more focused towards the ability of integrating and synchronising apps developed formultiple devices. The cloud approach will help developers to build functionalitythat can easily be used on different mobile devices with similar data and features.

Besides that, there are multiple companies working on cloud-based app development platforms. Developers are providedwith complete tool chains for building an app, continuous integration, testing and submitting their apps to the app stores.This leads to a faster development process without having in-depth technical knowledge for those important activities.

Security In Apps:

There have been several reports pointing to concerns of users with regard to hackingand as per the prediction of Gartner, 75% of mobile applications wouldnot be able to passeven basic security tests. Hackers will tend to continue with the trend of exploiting known security gaps in mobile applications for obtaining sensitive and confidential information. Security will still remain a big challenge in mobile applications. It has become a dire need today that developers take security issues like insecure data storage, unintended leakage of data, broken cryptography etc seriously.

Location Based and Beacon Internet (Wi-Fi) Services:

Beacon (Beam) technology has blurred the bottom line differences between online and offline - be it retail sector or advertising. This technology has already been adopted in iOS and is expected to follow in Android systems in the near future. Almost every industry including Retail, Hospitality,Tourism, Education, Healthcare, Entertainment, Travel, Corporate, Real Estate, Automotive, Advertising etc.is receiving benefits from such internet services. An instance could help understand this trend better is Beacons used in large buildings. It is quite common to see beacons implemented in large buildings to provide internal mapping. When an emergency occurs, the first responders can quickly access where the issue occurred. You can get a list of last known locations tracked through beacons or temperature sensors help to determine dangerous zones as long as they are active in case of emergencies like fire.

Wearable Tech:

Credit goes to the Apple Watch - wearable technology became the hottest topic in the industry of consumer electronics. Most of the wearable devices developed so far were focusing on health and fitness. But, with the opening of 2015 these wearables are also expected to be utilised in enterprises in order to improve their efficiency and productivity. For instance, there is a boom among fashion and textile industry about adopting wearable technology. The encouragement to the development of cross-device applications that can be operated over a cellular device as well as wearable device or any third party device is sure to open up an unlimited scope for new apps, breaking the limitations of traditional health and fitness apps.

Mobile Banking, Payments and M-Commerce:

Recent surveys have shown 19% of commercial sales are coming from either aSmartphone or tablet. Analysts say this trend will positively continue as more and more consumers are adapting m-commerce solutions. Transferring money or purchasing goods using a mobile phone is becoming as common as using credit or debit cards. This implies that developers can develop the mobile apps that can process transactions without needing cash or any physical cards.

Internet of Things:

Just like cloud technology, Internet of things is also gaining immense popularity. Though it just started gaining serious attention, this hype is expected to grow huge with new innovations and implementations that can open a ubiquitous world of connectivity and sources of information. Some key IoT trends that will be on lookout are new devices, development of new standards formulti-sensor support and M2M automation, vertical IoT services and a lot of topics related to security and privacy concerns. These trends clearly indicate a boom around Internet of Things, which will lead to an increased adoption of related products and a growth of the required ecosystem. Some organisations are still underestimating the impact of IoT on their market and business processes and it is highly recommended that they should measure this impact on their business goals.

Since IoT will be everywhere – just like are smart devices – developers are encouraged to create flexible mobile experience embracing those new opportunities provided by the sensors and actors around.

Prioritising User Experience ThroughApp Analytics and Big Data:

User experience will usher technology in the future. As the use of tablets, smartphones and wearable devices is increasing day by day, app user experience is getting more critical than ever. It seems to be even more challenging when in-app advertisements and purchases need to be kept in mind. Here, data analytics will play a vital role by helping app developers to bring improvements to the user experience.

So, it would just not be sensible to separate the successful mobile application development from analytics or big data. Modern businesses demand for instant insight into real time data that shows their customer’s behaviour and decision-making process. In fact, the relationship between big data and app analytics results in efficient business processes on the one hand and improvements in user experience on the other hand.

Improved Enterprise Apps:

As per the predictions made by IDC, 35% of big enterprises will utilise mobile application development platforms for building and deploying mobile apps. This indicates an upsurge in enterprise app stores that comprises internal app ratings, allowing companies to get rid of apps that are not in use and save huge amount of costs. Many enterprise app stores integrate with public stores that result into wider approach. Therefore, app developers will get a tremendous opportunity to work on applications for the growing mobile enterprise market.

Marketing, Advertising and Purchasing within Apps:

According to a new study publicised by Juniper Research, expenditure on in-app advertisements in all the mobile devices will get manyfold. Mobile advertisements are no longer limited to banners -a variety of ad formats such as image, text, or video ads are being integrated and experimented with right now. Both mobile app advertisements and purchases will become a focal point for monetisation and a ladder towards success as many app developers are making a shift away from paid download models.

The marketing techniques of mobile apps are also evolving constantly. In previous years, app marketers were extensively focused on grabbing maximum user attention (app downloads) instead of user engagement. Now, developers and marketers have started to realize the significance of an enhanced experience for organic users. Organic user is considered more engaged and loyal than users gathered via multiple paid channels. As stated before, a great user experience can be created by constantly analysing user behaviour and improving the app accordingly. With the availability of location based Wi-Fi services and beacon technology, there is even a whole new dimension of advertising the lets marketers initiate promotions based on the precise location and context of a user.

HTML 5:

HTML 5 and related development tools will gain huge popularity. As this technology will enhance, more and more enterprises will adopt “hybrid” as their primary technology for mobile apps. Unlike development of native apps, mobile applications built using hybrid frameworks like Ionic, Mobile Angular UI, Intel XDK or Sencha Touch can support multiple platforms and reaching a larger user base will get considerably cheaper. For that reason, developers should keep an eye on hybrid technologies and maybe even think about their focus on native app development.

Mobile Gaming:

In recent years, there has been a gradual movement observed in mobile games towards multi-player-gaming. With the rise of such games, integration of social media within games will become more significant than before. Furthermore, mobile games will increasingly be driven by cloud technology to sync between different devices playing the same game or to sync between different users taking part in the same game.

About the Author

Katie Stanfield is working as a mobile app developer with Xperts Infosoft. She has wonderfully highlighted the latestMobile App Development Trends after comparing the aspects of app development in India and other parts of the world. Share her knowledgeable posts on Facebook or Twitter.