Top Mobile App Development Trends 2020

Top Mobile App Development Trends that Will Dominate in 2020 Introduction In today’s time, we have a mobile app to fulfill all our needs. There are apps for cabs, for food deliveries, and we even have enterprise mobile app solutions.

The need to evolve them, with the top technology trends, is absolute for staying in business in these competitive times.

You lag one step behind the others, and it could mean the end of the race for your app on the Appstore/Playstore. Portability and exclusive UX are already on your favor, keep up with the latest mobile app development trends to stay on top of your games.

The technology has improved over the years, so has the sensors and availability of the internet. As the internet moved on from GPRS to 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G, apps have been enabled to do more, from much more than what they used to, and were capable of, with the first generation of mobile technology. And same might have been the case with websites, but they were never be able to keep up with the portability that comes with mobile apps.

According to Statista, the global mobile app downloads are expected to be about 129 billion in 2020, and the number is expected to rise to 161 billion by 2023.

The numbers say it all, about the popularity of mobile apps, they have found their usage for every niche and industry. No matter if you are a business, or an individual, if you want to be in the limelight, or sell something, you will need a mobile app to compete in today’s world. Things are changing at a fast pace, technology is being revolutionized, and today, we would be discussing the upcoming mobile app development trends.

Here’s the list of mobile app development trends that will dominate the market in 2020.

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Wearables

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Enterprise mobile apps

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Cloud-based apps

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IoT

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Decentralized mobile apps

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Artificial intelligence & Machine learning

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Extended Reality

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On-demand apps

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5G

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Beacon Technology

Let us now begin with a description of how each of these technologies will affect the mobile apps of the future.

1. Wearables If your app falls under the type that could be integrated with a wearable device, we suggest you incorporate its functionalities into your mobile app.

Wearables are the next big thing, to get a clearer picture, assume how it would have been if WhatsApp would have let to go, and won’t be displaying notifications on Apple watch. iOS app development and watchOS development go hand in hand, find experts and you can integrate anything you want.

We couldn’t imagine wearables getting any further if it’s not properly integrated with the mobile app. If you won’t take the full advantage of the capabilities of wearables, you would be left behind by the competition. You would need to invest a bit in watchOS and wearOS, along with iOS and Android app development. If you can find good use of mobile apps with wearables, go for it.

2. Enterprise Mobile Apps Cost reductions and portability are two of the most important reasons for enterprise mobile apps being a real thing. Everyone now understands that nobody likes hanging on the desktops and laptops, for mundane tasks. We aren’t trying to say enterprise mobile apps would replace desktop enterprise apps, but they can together, be great companions. We too believe the future of all kinds of apps is multi-experience, just as suggested by Gartner in their press release.

The Top Technology Trends for Enterprise Mobile Apps are: •

AR/VR

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Mobile bots

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Blockchain

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IoT

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Artificial Intelligence

Want to read about them in-depth? You can find all about them here.

If you fail to realize the pace at which things are changing, you will soon find yourself two steps backward. The goal for creating mobile apps isn’t just the extra portability, it’s about the best experience you can provide to an employee. A good mobile development company knows how things fit, and would suggest you get an app if your business has a good fit for it. We are hoping for some major improvements in enterprise mobile apps in 2020.

3. Cloud-based Apps A growing and a relatively new competition to native mobile app development, cloud-based apps promise a lot, compared to native app development. You can essentially create one app for both OSs on the cloud, as it doesn’t have to run on the device natively. The users can use the app from their mobile web browser, the application need not even be installed on the users’ app.

Top benefits of Cloud Computing •

Secure

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One app for all devices

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Doesn’t take up space on the device

It can be much bigger and better than what one phone could ever have handled.

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Most computing power is drawn from the cloud server.

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Least possible time to app development.

What makes it so secure is the fact that everything attached to it lays on the server. Don’t confuse it as a replacement to mobile apps, it is more like an extension to the field. When security and time to market entry are the important factors, cloud apps lies as one of the best options. Cloud mobile app development isn’t easy, try finding the best mobile app development company for a smooth experience.

4. IoT A technology trend which has been in the talks for a while now, and the one which has the potential to change our lives. We all wish for smart assistants which can do small things for us, we need both IoT enabled devices, and their data, to make that happen in real life. We need the data for making AI better, and IoT is the only way to gather it.

The machines too must be IoT compatible, for that data to make any sense. IoT based mobile apps counter that exact problem, by being a complement for simple AI. Long short story, we are far from achieving much in AI, so doing everything with your smartphone is the option for now. IoT mobile apps are the middleware between those devices and humans, you want your coffee made?

Just command the coffee maker to make it for you from your phone.

Smart homes are the farthest we have come in IoT, mobile apps have enabled that, but in 2020 that’s going to get beyond this. Both consumer and industrial IoT would highly benefit from mobile apps developed especially for IoT. Amazon’s dash button failed because they tried to attempt replacing what’s more feasible, digitally ordering things you need. Matching the level of convenience, we have with using a mobile app, is almost impossible to match for physical standalone buttons.

5. Decentralized mobile apps Like the first came the Chicken or the Egg story, the same would be the Blockchain to mobile Dapps, mobile Dapps to blockchain story, anything could happen. So, let’s think beyond blockchain systems being established first, mobile Dapps could very well be the first to efficiently implement decentralized systems. That’s exactly what we are looking forward to in 2020, the point is now or after, everything would be decentralized, the only question is when.

The benefits of decentralized mobile apps •

Firm crypto establishment

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Secure apps for all purposes

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Knowledge of complete data flow

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Has enormous implementation benefits when combined with AI & IoT

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All other benefits that come with Blockchain

Security and privacy are the two major concerns everyone has right now, no tech giant can be trusted after what happened with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica .The only way to build trust is through a decentralized digital ledger, just what Blockchain development focuses on. We are currently working on a project which revolves around implementing Blockchain in a mobile gaming app, we can certainly vouch that it’s possible and highly beneficial.

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Artificial Learning

Intelligence

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Machine

Both have prominently boosted mobile app development enormously. AI has done so much for our daily use of virtual assistants, while ML has made cameras and health devices top notch. iOS developers take note, Apple is one company that truly embraces it. Their closed environment which extends to watches to iPads to desktop to phones to iPods collects an unimaginable amount of relevant data that could be used for both AI and ML.

The AI that works in mobile phones may seem simple, but it took a lot of effort to create, and much more would be required to improve it further. We are looking forward to seeing enormous improvements in Siri this year, all iOS development companies and developers should be prepared for that. Even though ML used by Apple is usually for their stock apps, you should still be eyeing possibilities that it will be open to use for everyone, starting this year.

Both flagship Androids and iPhones are highly capable of whatever you throw at them, be it ML or AI-powered applications. The A13 Bionic is claimed to be the fastest CPU in a smartphone, it can perform over 1 trillion operations per second. The neural engine is separate, and so are the machine learning matrix multipliers.

We couldn’t even imagine what they are going to come with this year, and preparing with the implementation of ML and AI for iOS mobile apps seems to be the best bet. Prepare for smarter mobile apps, with AI, ML, and IoT technologies, being adapted in top mobile app development companies. You might also be interested in top AI development trends for 2020, if you are looking forward to implementing AI in mobile apps.

7. Extended Reality AR and VR are expected to show their true potential through extended reality mobile apps in many industries in 2020. Extended reality is what we wait for this year, as we have seen a whole lot of AR and VR separately over the years.

Even though we haven’t yet perfected either AR or VR, we think what lies beyond this is their perfection, and finally, extended reality.

Pokemon Go and Apple’s ARKit were just small parts of it, but they proved to be the steppingstones for the future of AR, VR, MR, and XR. It has a lot more to offer us, especially combined with other emerging technologies. We are talking about semi-virtual spaces, where everything would be malleable, as per our convenience.

The industries that could reap maximum benefit from AR, VR, and XR are: •

E-commerce

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Travel

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Education

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Healthcare

Want to read more about how these industries would be affected? Click here to know more.

8. On-Demand apps There’s a type of apps especially for making things more and more convenient for us. On-demand apps are those which facilitate users to request a certain service or a product, and a company executive provides or delivers it to them.

It was both considered a hassle, and for some services even a luxury, before many on-demand apps filled the sector.

Uber and Lyft can be called as the greatest examples of on-demand apps, for they have grown from nothing, to being the best on-demand apps on the planet. Remember the time when we used to call taxis by calling? Or giving thumbs up on the street to taxis in a hope they would stop? We don’t really want to remember those bad memories, on-demand apps have truly put us out of that misery.

Top on-demand mobile apps to expect in 2020: •

On-demand drivers app

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On-demand self-drive taxis (probably Uber would upgrade)

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On-demand home-cooked food

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On-demand tailors app

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On-demand dry-cleaners app

We believe even more of such daily chores that require service personnel will be smoothened out in 2020 with their own On-demand app. On-demand mobile app development is growing more than ever, expect new industries to be engulfed by its magic. Food and taxi apps rate amongst the top of them, as they are something we need as a daily necessity.

9. 5G The 5th generation mobile technology, or simply 5G, is the most awaited revolution coming to mobile phones in 2020. Even though 5G has been around the last year, both the services and the devices were very few in 2019.

Samsung brought a pretty expensive version of the galaxy series sporting 5G, while Apple completely avoided it, even in iPhone Pro. 5G will find it’s most specific use in IoT devices with the low latency it offers.

But the speed and latency that 5G offer, will be a huge factor for Android and iOS mobile app development in 2020. This will be the year when 5G would be a norm for all flagship phones that would be released this year. This is going to lead to a more widespread adoption around the world, along with telecoms focusing on upgrading more areas to 5G. Android app development service providers should take note of the capabilities of the new mobile technologies and plan ahead. 5G will soon become the norm in top developed countries in the world, your apps would lag behind if you fail to optimize it according to the speed 5G brings along. Expect extremely high speed and low latency, and plan your Android and iOS accordingly.

10. Beacon Technology Beacon is a comparatively old technology, and has kind of failed to live up to the hype, but has yet slowly gained momentum. Making a beacon triggered app is the responsibility of a mobile application development company. Even though it hasn’t been all so popular, it still has millions of devices in place already. Even if the beacon fails, the Bluetooth low energy tech would still persist and flourish, it has a lot of caliber in it.

All the smart wearables and smartphones have Bluetooth these days, we can only imagine the number of uses it could have when we combine it to wearable technology. Beacon aims to take further what GPS never could. Suppose you walk into a mall and receive push notifications from the apps of every brand present in the mall, that has a store in the mall. Nothing else could frustrate someone more, we guess.

Beacon enables signaling in a range of 20m-450m, so that’s how far personalization can get. The good thing is they can be set according to your personal requirements, if you want a user that’s close to 10m or less, you can set the beacon for that.

According to Statista, the Beacon technology’s worldwide value will be at least 100 times in 2026, of what it was in 2016 for every other industry. For the Retail industry, the same would be about 1000 times more than what it was in 2016.

Conclusion With mobile apps being so popular, one thing’s for certain, better mobile apps lie ahead in 2020 and further beyond. All these technologies will be supporting pillars for creating better and faster mobile apps, for both Android and iOS operating systems. We look forward to new kinds of apps too, with technologies like AI, Blockchain, AR/VR, and more, filling in space. New ideas would rule the spaces, there is something every industry would be offering for innovative mobile apps.

We predict the app development trends in 2020 would mostly see the rise in popularity of enterprise mobile app development, along with on-demand, and cloud-based apps. The technologies like 5G would enable faster apps, which was previously unimaginable for mobiles. Make sure you keep up with the technologies and trends we mentioned here and try to implement them as much in your mobile app. We hope we delivered the information we promised at the beginning of the article, if you want to add something to it, we would love to hear about it in the comments section below.

Reference: https://semidotinfotech.com/blog/top-mobile-app-development-trends/