Akash Soni
Smartphones are becoming smarter and so are the apps. Apps are taking on some measure of intelligence too, much to the delight of smartphone users. Much of the credit goes to mobile app developers implementing the latest emerging technologies. Here are a few trends in mobile app development that will stay here and play a key role in future developments for mobile apps too.
Blockchain
Blockchain is made famous by Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a highly secure transaction method. Blockchain technology allows anonymous verification and transaction. The inherent security is highly appealing for mobile developers and users who make use of mobilephones for financial transactions. Traditional methods have their own loopholes but a blockchain is rather hard to crack. It has also the advantage of a peer to peer transaction in payments unlike traditional payments where one must go through third party sites. Itcan do so with even higher levels of security for assurance of privacy. Mobile payments are highly popular and blockchain will make them even more so.
Internet of Things (IoT)
People are more or less familiar with Internet of Things in their smart solution homes. Machine learning and AI underlie IoT which translates to apps that are more useful for industry and manufacturing. Automakers to hotels and healthcare will derive benefits of IoT inproduction, maintenance and customer services.
Apps, if you look at them with wide open eyes, are pretty dumb. They can only do what they have been programmed to do and nothing else. A mobile user must go through the same routine each time he wishes to carry out a task. Mobile apps that incorporate machine learning willl earn from the behavior of the phone owners and adapt the app to respond and even anticipate what needs to be done. Maybe someone will come up with a sensor that interprets the brain signals and lets the app use machine learning and AI to map itself to its owner’s minds in the future? Meanwhile, AI will power even more chat bots that work as virtual assistants and voice recognition so that a device’s owner simply speaks and gets his wish fulfilled. This is one up on Aladdin’s magic lamp that needed to be rubbed to invoke the genie.
Cross-platform development
Cross-platform native app development could appear to be a contradiction of sorts since the current environment needs mobile app developers to write for Android, for iOS and for Windows using various tools. The future could see a shift to using C# and Javascript for crossplatform native apps. This means lower cost for clients, faster time to market and less headaches for developers.
Wearables
Not everything you see on the wrist in future will be a watch. It is more likely to be a wearable device. People are becoming more fitnessconscious and wearables are taking off. It follows that app developers will be kept busy exercising their imaginations and skills to come up with apps that will push wearable sales and delight users.
Instant apps
The more sophisticated an app becomes the more space it is likely to take up on the storage of a mobile device and a user is less likely to install them. He does not need to. The future is instant apps. You do not have to download, install and then run them. They can be run straightaway from Google Play store. In the same breath one can mention lazy loading. This is gaining traction. Components of software can be loaded on demand instead of loading everything at once which translates to faster app startup and reduced memory hogging.
Battery power conservation
The device’s hardware consumes power and so do apps. The trend is towards apps that will reduce or optimize battery power consumption. “Lite” takes on new meaning as apps will have facility to switch off screen in the Doze mode and then go into standby mode when a user switches to another app or does not work on the app.
AR and VR
Minds of human beings tend to get bored and AR as well as VR present huge opportunities to keep the excitement alive in a variety of ways. Just look at Google translate and how easy it is to capture an image of a text paragraph and let it translate to another language. Shoppers, wondering whether a product will fit into their home or not, can take the help of AR to visualize the product in their home. Even more interesting is VR and its blend with AR into mixed reality. VR helps the transition to V-commerce in which people can actually or rather virtually try out clothes and products before they buy.
Then there are other trends such as in enterprise apps and a move towards cloud and subscription based services that will help businesses be assured of a steady stream of revenue while personalizing experiences. Security takes a jump up with biometrics that can recognize faces, not just finger prints.
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