Predictions for the future of mobile application development is very much positive. University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) predicts that by 2016, the mobile app industry will grow tremendously to keep up with the demands of ever growing technology. About 10 million internet devices are expected to be in use in 2016. Currently developers are focusing on app development in the areas such as social networking, location-based services, context-aware marketing, mobile search, mobile commerce,object recognition, ad mobile payment systems.
Among the 91% of US population using a cell phone, 61% of them are smartphone user . The average number of installed apps of an adult phone user is 18 with 68% of app downloaders report actually using them. Google’s Android market hit 10 million downloads and reported users downloading app at a rate of 1 billion per month. The app revenue for 2014-2015 is expected to be $11.4 billion while for 2016 it is $24.
Some of the major trends that determine the future of mobile application development are discussed below:
Switch between devices
It has become very common to access the mobile data on PC or TV or switch between devices. Demand are raising for apps that interact with Smart TV as well as with other TV embedded hardware such as Xbox one and smartglass which acts like hub for games, movies, and music.
HTML5 and Cloud computing
These are the key technologies that affect the mobile development in Future. HTML5 is very much useful for building websites that are user friendly with smartphone devices. Cloud computing is a promising future technology for app development which provides the infrastructure.
High mobile processing
The latest iPhone 5 has introduced the A7 chip. The introduction of high processing chip like A7 has increased the mobile hardware performance capabilities. It greatly improves the graphical performance and memory for mobile applications which makes the smartphone to be fast and more efficient.
Operating system
Android and iPhone platform are the most dominating operating system. New competitors like Firefox OS and Ubuntu OS has changed the scenario. Apps are developed for these platforms exclusively. This fragmentation of developing unique apps for different platforms may definitely affect the future of mobile app development. Cross platform mobile application development is one of the promising option for developing single apps suitable across multiple platforms.
Apps connected with daily life
A smoke detector controlled with smartphone application was introduced by Google. Smart TVs and video games turned out the life to be more interesting. Thus infusion of mobile apps into the daily life has lead to the revolutionary changes in the field of mobile application development.
The gap between customers and business owners are greatly reduced by the mobile app. There is great hope for cross platform mobile application development. The developers should focus on developing apps with relevant overall design and user interface that attracts more crowd to the app.
The technology is continuously evolving based on the customer requirement. The developers should be proactive and aware of current trends in the market to gain more business profits.
