We are experiencing a tremendous scope in mobile application development sector. Owing to technological developments, consumer demands, plus a host of other factors – there is direct impact on trends of mobile apps.
Staying updated with the latest of trends is today the most critical perspective of success in the given space. Mobile app sellers and resellers would need to maintain the new trends so that they can better provide service to their clients. The same thing is for content producers and creators who are ready to give mobile development a new dimension.
Have you set yourself for the mobile app development changes that would be seen in the next year? The below mentioned list is a research-based data that shows the top trends in app development that would dominate the year 2022.
Application Integration through Internet of Things (IoT)
The IoT isn’t something new. There have been few years where IoT got used. The best thing about the platform is with the rise in penetration of mobile across a huge range of sectors has built endless opportunities for the IoT. People are now getting used to leveraging this technology to better their daily lives.
The task of IoT is to describe the growing network of our devices that remain connected to the Internet, whereby they provide automated control and convenience to the consumers. The most perfect instance is smart home solutions that shows how impactful IoT’s rise has been along with mobile app development.
Mobile apps could be used in adjusting the thermostat in any house with just the click of a remote. You could use it to lock unlock your doors also connect to the security systems inside the house. Refrigerators along with other household devices may also be connected to your mobile applications.
The Internet of Things market is expecting a global reach of $264 billion by 2022. Almost two-thirds of it will probably come from the software such as mobile apps.
That is some 14% odd rise from the year 2020. There has been a steady growth in the last few years where software has led the bandwagon. There is an increasing number of IoT devices. Based on stats, the revenue generated from the technology that is associated with the IoT will go beyond 1.6 trillion by the year 2025.
By the end of 2022, there would be more mobile app development where IoT will dominate the platform. Household gadgets, display devices, automobiles, and healthcare are all these markets that you keep an eye on.
Software or applications for foldable devices
It almost feels like some 25 odd years when we first held those flip phones. There have been a lot of changes over the past decade. Today we use these super smooth and sleek touch screens which run smoothly.
These smartphones have retained the old features like ability to expand or compress the screen size based on user preference. For instance, a user could make a call with this mobile closed (the flip flop ones). From the perspective of application development, content creators and resellers need to keep in mind these devices while they are updating or building an app.
The whole idea is that the software or mobile development app should adjust smoothly its displays in the screens as they fold or unfold. At this point, the foldable devices are only a silver of the complete share of the smartphone market. However, this would change in the years ahead. According to the study by 2019, 17% of the users of iPhone and 19% of the Android users are extremely exited about these phones that come with foldable design.
A popular research states, around 3.2 million foldable phones got shipped in the 2019. This forecast may reach 50 million units in the year 2022. The year 2022 would maybe dominated by the foldable mobile models, the significance is the mobile app development company has to plan accordingly.
Rolling out of 5G Technology
The rollout of 5G would create a major impact on the app trends in 2022. For the developers, creators, and resellers, this technology is rather geared to change the way these mobile applications are created and used.
2021 experienced almost 3.5 times higher growth of 5G connections than the previous year. These creations and connections would triple by the end of 2022. What is the significance of this development for mobile application development?
Speed plus efficiency would improve rather drastically. In fact, there is expectation that 5G will deliver 10 times decrease in the latency, while working on boosting the traffic capacity and network efficiency. When we compare 4G, 5G would be light years ahead in terms of speed, depending on the operator of the mobile network.
The 5G penetration would ultimately extrapolate the functionality of the mobile apps. This would allow developers towards adding newer features to the apps not affecting negatively the performance of the app.
Wearable devices and their development
Wearable technology is a fad that’s been rising for years now. However, we can’t call it a breakthrough in the market. We have been seeing the smartwatches. Fitness bands, and trackers for quite some time now. The scene is such that we are yet to reach the full potential of wearable devices.
While the businesses are not seeing a consistent jump every year, the growth is relatively steady. The trend of wearables has changed, and it would continue changing the same way according to the developments of the mobile apps.
For example, Apple had made a huge announcement regarding app integration and wearables at WWDC of 2019. The latest development in the Apple App Store is the Apple Watch. There are independent apps getting built specifically for the said devices. These developments have created huge opportunity for the content creators and app sellers. In the year 2022 more number of mobile apps would be made keeping in mind the wearables. Users would have the ability to download tons of apps straight from their wrists.
We have just begun scratching on the surface with integration of wearables and integration of mobile apps. That the coming years would be exceptionally progressive within this category.
Beacon Technology
The beacon technology has found adoption in wide range of industries. From hospitality to retail to healthcare, this technology this technology has the advantage of adding advanced functionality to nearly any of the mobile app.
The first ever beacons on mobile technology were developed in 2013. But in the past few years, commendable number of advancements have been made in this technology. Let us check this instance of how the beacons work in tandem with mobile apps. Let us assume you are a reseller of mobile apps builder for retailers. Your customers could install beacons in their stores that could connect with the smartphones of the users through Bluetooth when the app is installed on their device. Whenever a user passes by any beacon, they could be automatically notified regarding a sale or special on the products in that store.
Beacons are also useful in in tracking buyer behaviour in the stores. They could detect in case a user is spending a rather huge amount of time in a specific aisle. The app could trigger automatically a push notification so that a sale is enticed at some later date in relation with those products.
The prime benefit of beacon technology market remains to be increasing at an annual growth rate of around 59.8%. According to estimates at its market value, it will reach around $56.6 billion by around 2026. By that time, it’s net worth would be ten times that of what was in 2016.
Mobile Commerce
There are a huge number of app trends enlisted in 2022 without the mention of mobile commerce. This trend was dominating 2020, 2021 and would continue to dominate 2022. Almost every business is using mobile apps so that they could increase the revenue. From retailers dealing with huge bulk to the individual players in the market, to personal brands, business can get huge profits in this. Mobile ecommerce is one top feature for the resellers of mobile app that can be showcased during client pitches. Almost every day another business is launching one app to boost its sales.
We are not at that point where mobile app is a necessity, but we are reaching almost there. Every business or individual that is selling online is competing with the giants like Flipkart, Amazon. To remain in competition, it is essential to replicate whatever creates those brands that much successful, where mobile development app is at the top of this list.
In the year 2021, almost 72.9% and more of the entire ecommerce sales was from the mobile apps. Apps today are playing a huge role will still play in the success of ecommerce.
Artificial Intelligence
Both AI and ML penetrated the mobile application development almost years ago. However, we have only begun scratching on the surface understanding how these advanced technologies could be leveraged.
When we first ponder of AI, there are certain virtual assistants like Alexa or Siri that come to mind. However, there are far more developments that has happened in this for app development. In 2021, Apple had released Core ML 3, where the latest version of the iOS framework was designed to developers embed AI technology within their software.
Instances of AI features that could be implemented into the mobile app would include:
- Recognizing images
- Face Detection
- Image and face classification
- Classification and sentiment recognition
- Predictive maintenance
- Speech recognition
Artificial intelligence could make the apps much smarter and improve their performance at each stage. From the process of backend development to the user experience at frontend, the AI and ML would alter the way the apps are getting built.
Mobile payments and mobile wallets
We discussed the role of mobile commerce for developing mobile apps in 2022. But how people pay with their mobile phones is also evolving. Mobile wallets like Samsung Pay, Google Pay, and Apple Pay are continuously trending upwards. The prediction is the mobile wallet domain would double its market in the coming couple of years.
All the smartphone users are gradually adopting the modes of mobile payments. They are also using the app functionalities to make payments through wearable devices. In the forthcoming years, all the apps in mobile would need to account for the mobile pay.
Mobile wallets must be considered towards mobile app development in 2022. Wallet integration needs to become a standard feature for all apps that process the transactions. The current scenario unfortunately isn’t such. However, the penetration rate in mobile wallet in apps would increase significantly in the years ahead.
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)
AR would continue trending upwards in 2022 and future. The mobile apps could use the AR features for a huge range of causes. The mobile app uses AR to showcase several product features of the business that helps the customer understand almost everything about the product before he/she even decides to buy the product/service.
For content creators AR adoption is one of the top trends in mobile app development. Using the features of AR you could get creative like some of the latest social media channels that use this technology.
Virtual reality is also revolutionizing the world in mobile app development. This is exceptionally true for the gaming apps. VR technology could connect using apps, phones so that gaming experience can be enhanced using fully functional apps in mobile. Regarding VR and AR, the mobile app development trends cannot be ignored in case of the industries mentioned.
Chatbots
These applications have been around for almost a decade or more. They were initiated in 1990s and have eventually become highly advanced. Chatbots on the websites have garnered their popularity because of the customer demand. It is getting to become the new standard of customer service domain.
However, of the millions of apps available on the playstores, only a meagre percentage use chatbots. This would change by 2022. As chatbots get driven by the AI, they are giving more human-like responses. We have already discussed on how AI would continue going upward, and this is one of the reasons. The growth of global chatbots is approximately 24% every year. It is expected that almost 25% of all the tech interiors in customer service would be facilitated by the VRs in 2020. This requires chatbots to penetrate the mobile app development arena.
Superior security of the apps
Cybercrime is almost everywhere today. From the single content creators to the multi-billion-dollar business, no one can stay immune. Malware attacks that are designed towards harming mobile devices increased almost 54%. Greater than 60% of the frauds originates from the mobile devices. Of the said figure, 80% would come from the mobile apps.
From the standpoint of app development, you are not able to take any kinds of shortcuts while you are thinking of securing your app. If you a reseller of an app, security requirements need to be your top priority for all your clients also.
App users remain aware of the security risks. So, from this point forward, people would think twice regarding sharing of passwords or even providing sensitive information to all the third-parties, instance here are the app developers.
Developers would begin implementing features like Sign in with a device in the mobile apps. Rather than forcing the app users towards filling out form fields with their names, passwords to email addresses, they could simply create an account also sign in with the help of this signing ID. These accounts are still protected with the two-factored authentication.
Predictive Analytics
Here’s another trend in mobile app development that will shake things up within the mobile app industry. By using the technology for the machine learning (ML), AI, data mining, also modelling, predictive analytics has the power to forecast events leveraging data.
The big industry leaders are using trends in mobile app development that would shake things. Take the instance of Netflix – the platform offers TV shows plus movie recommendations based on previous viewing trends. In the year 2022, predictive analytics would be implemented would get implemented on a highly mainstream level, for huge ranges of mobile apps. The basic purpose would be enhancing the UI/UX through an app. 19% of the apps have AI for predictive analytics, something that ranks first in the marketing category and fifth in the overall.
The main idea is no two users would posses the same experience with the app. Preferences and suggestions of the products would be presented differently on the basis of every user’s behaviour history and actions.
Apps On Demand
On-Demand mobile app development is rather trending upward in the year 2022. Apps like this of Airbnb plus Uber have shown the success rate of apps in this space. Users spend almost $57 billion every year the on-demand services. These are certain instances of how apps could transform the on-demand industry:
- The concierge
- Doctors on-beck and call
- Virtual coaches and tutors
- Food cleaning
- Maintenance
- Fitness based on demand
- Barber plus beauty salon
The opportunities for the on-demand apps are rather endless. As a mobile app reseller, this is one huge opportunity where businesses can widen their customer base. Through leveraging the on-demand abilities, your clients could add better and higher functionality to their applications, which would increase the profits for all.
