Top 12 Trends Shaping Mobile Application Development in 2020

By Mitul Makadia

With a whopping 3.5 billion smartphone users across the world, mobile apps undoubtedly enjoy a huge user base. Regardless of the industry, your business belongs to, mobile application penetration has redefined business goals and strategies across verticals. Constant innovation and adaptability have remained unchanged factors.

Kodak, Compaq, Blockbuster Video – what do these have in common? Despite being widely popular in the past, they failed to keep up with technology and, therefore, ended up closing or selling out. All this at a time when technology was not changing as fast as it is today. Technology truly is in a constant state of flux. When businesses fail to keep up, they usually tend to go the Blockbuster way.

Almost every business needs to amalgamate the latest mobile app development trends and extend its marketing strategy, in order to gain traction towards optimum growth and reach their targeted market effectively.

According to Statista, by 2020, mobile apps are expected to generate $189 Billion US dollars in revenue. However, your approach cannot be limited to deploying the right strategy. You also need to be mindful of incorporating the latest trends in mobile app development. Whether you are a developer or a business that has a mobile app, you must be updated with the latest mobile app trends. Without incorporating these trends into your apps, your mobile might become obsolete, just like the companies mentioned at the start.

Here’s a look at some of the trends that will change the future of mobile app development.

Internet of Things

Internet of Things or IoT is a technology that has been around for a while, but gained popularity with the advent of wearable devices and smart home devices. With more and more people using wearable devices and smart home appliances, the demand for IoT based mobile apps that can control these devices has also increased. An IoT app helps control and monitor these devices.

These apps do much more than just controlling the devices. They can read the data from the sensors on devices and analyze this data to create helpful reports and charts. IoT apps that are connected to smart home devices also reduce energy consumption. Apart from personal applications, IoT apps are also used for enterprise management. They can even control various aspects of a manufacturing unit, self-driving cars, and more.

Beacon Technology

Beacon technology is a location-based technology that uses the Bluetooth of the smartphone to identify the proximity to a store, a hotel, or a museum or other such enterprises. The beacons in the location send signals that trigger the app to be opened on the customer’s phone. The app can then perform a variety of tasks. It can enable users to shop from a store or order room service within a hotel. It can even provide information about the various pieces on display in a museum. Beacon apps have the potential to overhaul the retail sector.

This helps in improving customer satisfaction by providing personalized service at the customer’s fingertips. Customers no longer have to wait for a salesperson to answer their queries. They can use the app integrated with beacon technology for this. Retail stores can also use this to enable cashless and queue-less checkouts.

Blockchain Technology

When you hear blockchain, your mind immediately goes to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Even though cryptocurrencies were the point of inception of blockchain technology, its application has evolved into other areas as well. It is common to see mobile wallets and currency converters that use blockchain technology in mobile apps. It can also be used to track digital assets, secure digital identity, provide cloud storage solutions, keep track of loyalty programs and rewards, provide proof of provenance in supply chain management, and even to notarise ownership.

Add in smart contracts with blockchain, and possibilities are limitless. The security provided by the smart contracts ensures that you can use it for a range of things, from renting various items to issuing loans. The world of blockchain itself has innumerable possibilities, but combining it with another mobile app trend such as the Internet of Things or IoT would make for a really powerful tool in your hands. Apps created using these two trends will be secure, fast, and cost-efficient.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that AI and ML are on the list. In fact, they would have been among the top mobile application development trends in 2019 as well, and they will most probably be on the list for 2021 as well. That is how relevant and versatile these technologies are. AI and ML are the forces behind chatbots, facial detection, motion detection, recommendation engines, speech recognition, text prediction, financial forecasting, and much more. As the technology becomes more advanced, the number of ways and the ease with which it can be integrated into a mobile app also increases.

IT, marketing, finance, and customer service are the top industries that have integrated AI and ML into their apps to resounding success. Google has successfully created Duplex, which can place calls on behalf of humans to fix appointments.

Instant Apps

Creating an app requires you to find a balance between all the features you want to add and how much storage space it could occupy in the phone memory. The future of mobile app development lies in apps that load fast, occupy less memory, but are feature-rich. Instant apps do all of this. Instant apps load with just a touch. There is no need to download a huge installation package. The app is created in modules that can be downloaded and executed on their own. You will be able to download the part you need by following a link.

If someone shares a link with you and click on it, instead of waiting for the whole app to download, you only need to wait till that module get downloaded. Many users hesitate to download large apps due to a lack of storage space. By offering the app in parts, you are ensuring that your product is downloaded by more number of users.