Top Mobile App Development Trends to Watch for in 2020

The emergence of futuristic technologies and the ever-changing requirements of smartphone users have started reshaping the mobile app development domain. Every enterprise, irrespective of its scale and business model, needs to integrate a feature-rich app in the system to address a huge audience and strengthen the global presence. 

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Experts have predicted that in the coming years, the mobile app industry will remain one of the fastest-growing sectors. Statista has expected that mobile apps will generate $189 Billion USD by the end of 2020. Entrepreneurs just tend to jump on the mobile app bandwagon, but it is fair to mention that a simple app with basic features won’t help much in today’s competitive age. 

The mobile app development process evolves almost every day, and it is necessary for your app to keep pace with changing trends and increasing demands of the app users. To make your task of developing a user-friendly app a bit easy, here we give a list of the top ten mobile app trends to watch out in the year 2020.

• Prevalence of Beacons

Apple’s iBeacons are gaining popularity across the brick-and-mortar stores. With this, this trend is adopted by museums, hotels, and healthcare organizations. When it comes to location and proximity-based marketing, the beacons can work wonders. When they are merged with IoT, they can be a blessing for the retail sector. In the coming years, we will witness the advent of mobile payment beacons, Beacon treasure hunting, and automated ML along with beacons. 

• Enterprise Mobile Management on the rise

Enterprise Mobile Management (EMM) will be a major part of the enterprise mobile app development. It enables employees to use mobile devices securely and streamlines business processes by assisting companies in mobile computing. The rise of EMM is mainly attributed to three approaches- Security of apps, management of finances, and app maintenance. EMM also facilitates the sharing of data across various mobile devices.  

• Advent of 5G

A long-awaited communication technology 5G is all set to come in the year 2020. It will impact a lot on various business processes by bringing around 100 times more speed than the existing 4G network. 5G will not only remain the key trends of the mobile app development domain but also be considered as one of the major technology trends of the future. Apart from speed, the 5G technology will be useful for data security, AR technology, and 3D gaming. 

• Emergence of wearables

Wearable devices are around us for quite some time. However, its prominence is going to increase in the year 2020 thanks to the growing popularity of IoT technology at the workplace. The wearable device revenue will increase significantly as the technology expands beyond smartwatches. As per one estimate, the revenue will cross 72 billion USD by 2022. Top sectors like manufacturing, utility, and healthcare will remain big beneficiaries of wearable technology. 

• AI gets mainstreamed

Predictive analytics, machine learning, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are not new terms for the corporate world. The reason is simple. AI (Artificial Intelligence) has strengthened its position gradually in the corporate world and mobile app development offers a great way to leverage its benefits. AI is evolving rapidly to meet the complex requirements of modern businesses more effectively, and the year 2020 will remain crucial for its growth. 

• Instant Apps

Android Instant Apps do not require additional space in the user’s smartphone, and the users can easily use them without downloading. These characteristics make Instant Apps highly convenient for developers and smartphone holders alike. These are native apps with the functionality of a website. Excellent user experience, smaller size, and saving on data as well as the device memory are some of the noteworthy benefits of Instant Apps.  

• IoT integration

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most popular concepts recently. IoT app development and other technology trends can transform the user’s experience and fetch valuable data for making informed decisions. It is expected that by the year 2020, the total number of connected devices will be around 30 billion globally. The mobile app development company uses several platforms like Ubidots and Thingworx for integrating IoT features in the mobile app. 

• AR and VR gain ground

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are futuristic trends that are all set to dominate the mobile app domain in the year 2020 and beyond. We have already witnessed a massive success of Pokemon Go, and now it’s time to bring transformation through AR and VR apps. Both Apple and Google have launched their AR platforms to help developers make the most of this technology. Though the cost of app development with AR or VR features is high, it’s worth!   

• Mobile wallets become popular

As the number of online transactions is steadily increasing, the usage of mobile wallet apps also grows across the world. Apple Pay and Google Wallet have already set the milestones and they have shifted people gradually shifted from eCommerce to mCommerce. Though we have several big players are present, still, many opportunities are left in the mobile wallet app development domain. Gradually, this trend will become more popular.

• Focus on app security

The incidents of security threats and data breaches are increasing which results in the growing concerns of app security. The mobile app development process will focus more on ensuring the security of the user’s valuable data and online transactions. Apple has shifted its coding language from Objective-C to Swift for enabling mobile app developers to integrate more security features. Also, many apps are including online transaction feature that needs a robust security infrastructure.  

Apart from these trends, we can also consider the growth of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), the rise of chatbots, cloud integration, and the addition of Blockchain-based features as major trends to watch out in 2020. Though the integration of advanced features will significantly increase the cost of app development, it will hold the key to success for your app in 2020. 

Author bio

Robert Jackson is a content cum digital marketer at Solution Analyst, a leading mobile app development company. He is an avid reader and likes to remain updated for technological advancements in the domains of web, mobility, IoT, and emerging technologies. His articles are informative and interesting at the same time as he expresses insightful thoughts clearly.