The Smartphone sales have reached the peak level in recent years and they are becoming cheaper and more affordable, the number of persons on the Internet has been increased dynamically. In future, it is expected that there would be over ten billion devices on the internet.
Technology has made our lives easier and it is constantly evolving, in which apps are no exception. It is no surprise that today’s apps have become lighter from their early iterations. For a past few years, apps have migrated from telling the users what data to be used, thus allowing the user to determine the content.
The user data has improved dynamically, and tools like location data and gyroscopes have increased the app functionality and user experience. On the development side, early generation apps were built to make websites mobile friendly.
The data through the connected devices is undergoing a dramatic change. At present, the idea of an app as liberated one is becoming less important and the idea of an app as a publishing tool, with connected notifications that contain content is becoming more important. Because of this scenario, the design will be changed and change the product strategy.
No more Screens full of app icons:
The screen of apps is going to dramatically change in future. The idea of having a screen full of icons, which represents the independent apps, is making less sense. And those apps pushing the content makes more sense. The primary design pattern is cards. It is not the cards as a simple interaction design pattern for an app content, but as containers for content that can come from any app.
Most Essential Things:
Designing systems not destinations:
In a world of many different screens and devices, the content needs to be crumbled down into atomic units so that it can work for the technology platform. For example, Facebook is not an app or website. It is an environment of objects such as people, photos, videos, comments and so on, which are accumulated in many different ways through the folk’s newsfeeds, timelines, and pages, delivered to a range of devices. Hence, Facebook is not a set of web pages or screens in app. It is said to be a system of objects and relationships between them.
Recent changes to iOS and Android Notifications:
Most of the things are changed with iOS and Android. A notification used to tell us to open an app and also a destination. But that also it is changing fast nowadays. But now, one can take action directly in android notifications. Sometimes that takes the folks to that action in the app itself, on the other side of the coin, one can do the action directly, which means there is no necessary to open the app at all. The future version of Android breaks the notifications into independent cards.
What are the few things which developers need to know about future of mobile app development?
Cross-Platform and Cross-Device Development:
The apps are no longer limited to the single platforms. Due to its low pricing, Android will rule the platform in terms of sales, and hence iOS will rule the high-end market. The applications are no longer confined to specific platforms. Due to the evolution of the fifth version of HTML (Hyper Text markup Language), in the future, hybrid mobile applications will work for all the platforms.
IoT Applications:
The IoT (Internet of Things) will help us to control the things through the applications. Google Glass, Apple Watches, and others are just the base. In our daily life, we are seeing some great models of IoT applications such as self-driving cars, rings that control everything etc.
Developer Tools:
Thousands of applications are introduced each and every year, there is too much of pressure on launching apps in the shortest time period without any error. Most of the businesses want to get into the field of ASAP. The application programming interfaces and software developer kits make convenient to launch applications in shortest time. In future, we can see a rise in more applications and more advanced software kits.
Location-Based Services:
We have more convenient ways to perform our day-to-day activities. These types of apps check the location and find the best resource nearby. In future, we can see a rise in the location-based apps as its demand will rise in consumers as well as enterprise domain.
Cloud Computing Apps:
For a past few years, we can see a large number of apps merging with the cloud computing. Now, most of the folks are shifting their databases to cloud and Internet Service Providers are also encouraging cloud storage at very moderate price. The cloud storage helps end users to synchronize and access their database from anywhere and with no risk of content extortion. This trend keeps on increasing with more number of cloud computing applications.
Mobile Security Apps:
Smartphones are becoming more important to each and every in this world. And also our dependence on them increases for accessing bank applications and other private data. The mobile security apps will see a higher demand in the coming years.
Apps- The most prominent one
It is said to be the apps are just an engine that translates the raw data into useful information. The most interesting thing is that an app can send the users essential notification. Mobile OS features such as the ability to take action right from the notification on iOS or android are going to make the folks need to see an app’s User Interface less over time.
The opening of apps is still necessary one and it is vital for many contexts, the especially composition of new content including dedicated workflows. A bank of app icons as a dominant design pattern feels inefficient as of now, and in future, it will disappear, correctly consigned behind the “show me my apps” action.
Arise of new Competitors:
Usually, people don’t interact with the cards provided to them; the system guides them with a specific source app. The data from different apps are presented side by side. The competition is between products that do the same job, and not the products that are in the same category.
In future, the apps will realize they are competing for Jobs, on the other side of the flip they may not have realized their product addresses. For example, on twitter there is a huge competition between apps and addressing their respective job. The profound competition means the enterprises will have to spend a lot of time to design the cards because they will possibly compete with cards from Facebook, or Amazon, or Google. The days of sending notifications to bring folks back to an app are becoming decreased, with a better focus on designing notifications that folks engage with there and then, independent of the opening app.
The future of Mobile Apps:
The developers are making several predictions about the future of apps. The analytics will also help with better application development and will centralize the coding process, hence to create a better user satisfaction. The future evolution of mobile apps may even see computers designing apps based on specific parameters and goals. The companies are formed around mobile instead of trying to drift the things onto mobile so one can simply access it.
