Global Trend in Application Development for 2020

Global Trends in Custom Application Development According to Statista, the worth of the mobile apps industry will exceed $188.9 billion in 2020.

That’s a 113% increase in four years. Due to the increasing reliance on smartphones and the declining retail sales of laptops and desktop computers, this is inevitable. Everything from shopping to gaming to social networking sites is now managed through smartphone apps.

This trend has delivered a revolution in smartphone app design. More apps are now designed for more sophisticated functions and with better security. Moreover, app design has become more complex and intelligent. With artificial intelligence, Blockchain, and virtual reality jumping into the mix, this trend is only going to go up.

Custom app development is also on the rise. Apps are being designed for different types of end users. There are apps for business-oriented individuals, general users, gamers, and all others.

Big changes have been seen in security as well, with efforts being concentrated on building more secure apps.

2020 Software Development Trends

App development is no longer the kid’s arena it once was. With smartphones becoming just as powerful as high-end PCs, there is more room to grow than ever. Here are just a few of the trends that will influence the design of custom applications in 2020.

Cloud Integration While this isn’t strictly a 2020 software development trend, cloud integration is the key to making more powerful applications. A lot of businesses still use native architecture and servers to power their IT infrastructure. However, this is fast changing. Using local servers and manpower is being seen as increasingly inefficient. With the integration of cloud technology all over the planet, billions in resources will be saved. However, it will also allow for better app development.

The myriad benefits include: Unlimited Scalability The cloud will allow for app scalability on an almost unbelievable scale. Already, apps like Fortnite and PUBG are hosting millions of players across the world on different consoles and devices. With cloud hosting becoming the norm, this process will keep on getting better.

Reduced Costs The cloud will lower a lot of hosting costs by hosting apps on remote servers. It will allow for data to be shared across multiple platforms and devices. This will help collaborative efforts

among members from different countries. Simultaneous work on a single app will be possible without teams being in the same place.

Better Efficiency Obviously, running applications through the cloud will allow for more storage and more processing power to be saved. This will allow various applications to run much more efficiently on your mobile device. This will save battery power and put much less pressure on the mobile device, possibly elongating its lifespan. Hence, we can expect bigger, more ambitious custom applications in 2020.

Sophisticated Security The cloud will solve a lot of app security issues as well. For one, it will allow apps to be updated more regularly. That will be a relief in itself. Who wants to update the same app three times a week, right? Also, cloud-based applications will get software patches and security updates without having to install them. This will keep them much more secure.

More Powerful Apps Apps that run through the cloud require less storage space and processing power. Hence, they will function more efficiently on your mobile device. App development can become a lot more ambitious through this business model. Allowing the bulk of the app’s processing power to come from remote servers will leave more processing power for you. Apps like this already exist, including the excellent Prisma, which uses remote servers to digitally filter images.

Augmented and Virtual Reality AR and VR have taken over the gaming space completely. VR versions of games are being developed for major consoles like the PlayStation and Xbox. Specialized hardware is being developed and sold for this, including the HTC Vive, the Oculus Rift, and the Sony PlayStation VR. As for the AR, the viral gaming sensation that blew away the competition in 2017 was Pokémon Go. It used Augmented Reality paired with GPS technology to project images of Pokémon in different spaces.

This has just been an initial wave. AR and VR will be integrated much further in to the zeitgeist of app culture. Already, we’re seeing the applications of AR in some apps on the iOS and Android. The iPhone X, launched in 2018, allowed consumers to make their own animated Emojis. The following year, the Samsung Galaxy S10 featured the same capability.

Similar features are available on apps like Snapchat and Facebook Messenger that place animated elements on real faces. This will be followed by simulated environments which will function without the need for screens or other apparatus.

AR and VR will play a huge part in the developments of custom applications in the future.

Mobile Wallets and Payment Services Mobile applications for payment services and mobile wallets have become more popular in the last decade. Countries in Africa like Kenya and Zimbabwe and huge countries like China are

using mobile payment services over banking. Mobile wallets are offering higher levels of encryption and usability than mobile banking applications. As a result, the mobile payment space is slated to reach an estimated $503 billion by 2020.

Many banks have also adopted mobile banking services as a result and are offering their own versions of these apps. Mobile devices are becoming more geared towards mobile payment applications as a rule. Apple has introduced Apple Pay in the last decade and Google has introduced GPay. Very recently, Apple even introduced a credit card that is constantly linked to your iPhone.

With the advent of crypto-currencies, more applications will be developed for cashless payments around the world. Already, Chinese consumers pre-dominantly pay by scanning QR codes. These services have been made available by giants Alibaba and Tencent.

It’s only a matter of time before making payments through your phone will become the default instead of an option.

Blockchain Integration Blockchain allows for decentralized transfer and storage of information. It ensures complete transparency and is practically fraud proof. It was introduced as the backbone of Bitcoin, but now it’s being seen as a universal data transfer system.

It has even led to the birth of DApps (Decentralized Apps). These are applications that are open sourced and decentralized. They usually involved the receipt or the transfer of some sort of cryptographic token.

DApps are also not owned by anybody and thus they can be used by multiple parties without restrictions. These applications will allow for the mobile counterparts to smart contracts which allow for business agreements on the go. With Blockchain becoming ever more popular, so will the proliferation of DApps.

As such, the projection is that distributed ledger technology will reach a valuation of $5.43 billion by 2023.

Self-Testing and Self-Protection

One of the biggest aspects of 2020 custom application development is self protection and self-testing. The idea is to improve app security by testing in a runtime environment that is capable of preventing real-time attacks.

It is estimated that by 2020, nearly 40% off enterprises engaged in application development will have adopted self-testing and self-protection.

The first aspect of this process is called: Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) This is a technology built in to the application runtime environment. It’s “capable of controlling application execution and preventing real-time attacks�. RASP is basically an addition to application development that improves its chances of surviving hacks and malicious attacks in the real environment. Therefore, it makes the chances of that app not being misused or hacked in the open market.

RASP studies the runtime environment that applications usually have to function in and mimics that behavior. In doing so it uses the analysis of web traffic and user behavior to create realistic scenarios for the app to defend against. It prioritizes measures to prevent the attacks from happening in the first place, as well as specific responses to attacks.

This involves issuing alerts and blocking application executing for requests and patching the application to prevent further attacks. By ensuring the responses to these scenarios are preplanned, the eventuality of a successful attack is substantially reduced.

The Need for RASP Runtime Application Self-Protection is the need of the hour due to the rise of zero-day defects.

Researchers at Forrester have discovered nearly 3600 new open source component vulnerabilities in 2016. This is an amount 10% greater than 2015. Hence, the need for an innate system that anticipates these vulnerabilities is inevitable.

This also benefits applications that can’t be secured pre-release. These are applications that can’t benefit from pre-release security testing like older apps not under active development or third-party apps. This also includes applications which are very costly to fix, and are thus abandoned completely.

Who Benefits from RASP? There are potentially unlimited benefits from RASP. Security leaders can benefits from tools which use their deep analysis of applications to block malicious behavior. This can be achieved without investing in the necessary learning period required by web application firewalls. Security leaders can use this analysis to understand vulnerabilities that repeatedly pop up and attack the root of the problem.

Application Security Stakeholders can also use RASP tools to track attempted exploitations of vulnerabilities in applications. This can help stakeholders train their developers to use more tact and skill in their coding to block these vulnerabilities. Secure coding, reporting defects to third party developers and software vendors, and evaluations of code quality, etc. will all benefit.

Developers will also benefit from RASP because it will give them more information on where vulnerabilities reside. Actionable data can be derived from the RASP for corrective measures that will be immediately implemented.

Self-testing Applications Self testing apps are connected applications which use certain engines to test themselves. This practice allows for writing built in tests in to the code itself. If done right, it allows the execution of a single command to execute all tests. On paper, this allows for applications to be free of potential errors and defects before rollout. This is a very important influence on 2020 custom application development.

This is more and more important in today’s world where app updates are issued every single week. These updates, often small, come with the caveat of affecting performance one time too many. Processing performance, battery usage, app crashes are all common knowledge to even smartphone novices. However, self-testing allows for these caveats to be identified before roll out.

Self-testing allows for the app to run through several different scenarios at the same time. It pushes the app to its limits and identifies the major errors and bugs that appear. Bug detection would allow for actionable intelligence to be revealed in order to remove it.

Self-testing also reduces the possibility of device specific errors. These occur when specific builds of the app cause problems on certain devices. With the variety of devices available today, fragmentation is an issue with several devices. However, through self-testing the occurrence of device specific errors will decrease.

These improvements to custom app development will have a huge influence on the type of apps made in 2020. It will also change the way they function and how they are used on different devices. It will improve their capacity to function and to handle more complicated tasks overall.

Author Bio: The author of this blog, Mr. Duhane Williams, CEO of Venttraffic Media Incorporates is a keynote speaker, Inventor and strategic thinker on Digital Marketing trends and software application. He has over 10 years of experience in the field with most of his time spent in digital media, complex hosting, ecommerce, applications integrations and enterprise development. Visit https://www.venttraffic.com to read more.