Top 10 Mobile App Development Trends 2021 [Android and iOS]

Gauging the technological trends at the ground level can become increasingly difficult when you are busy driving the strategy of your business out of the park! That’s why we have compiled the list of most effective upcoming trends in mobile app development for you. Take a look:

Most of the media bifurcates between AI and ML, whereas Machine Learning is a part of the larger cohort of Artificial Intelligence, much like Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing.

AI and its incumbent technologies have opened new doors of opportunities for businesses:

Netflix has leveraged the power of AI in the content curation area. The basic business is the same – to provide differentiated content; but how the content gets discovered on the website is where AI has added value by matching user behaviour patterns with the right content type.

One key parameter where AI was lagging was comprehension of human emotions. AI has improved in this area as well. Chatbot Ella, developed by company HRA Pharma Deutschland, uses EQ to help you find answers to the questions which are not available on the website itself. This has significantly impacted the customer engagement numbers.

IoT simply means a mechanism where devices are able to share data in real-time and optimize the process for the user to enhance experience and make it more efficient to run the process. Lately, IoT investments have increased across industries.

A good mobile app development company can help you seamlessly integrate the experience of an IoT system with a user app. The biggest industry which is showcasing the efficacy of IoT is home appliances. More and more devices are getting connected to the internet to provide a more personalized and efficient experience to the home inhabitant. Apps that bring the control of this entire system to the user’s phone will be an inseparable piece of the IoT puzzle.

Beyond the advent of cryptocurrencies, Blockchain indeed has tremendous impact on mobile app development:

a. One of the biggest applications of blockchain for mobile app development is coming in the form of cybersecurity, where entire public networks can now be safeguarded by the network itself instead of making one or two security firms take care of it. You can use a similar system instead of the client side-server side setting, to increase security and bring down costs.

b. Indexing and storing information: One of the biggest use cases for blockchain has been the one where businesses try to make information available in a more updated, decentralized and secure format. Many municipalities have started adapting blockchain to avoid the paper trail and yet keep a track of information.

AWS and Azure provide a wide range of services and products into one cloud suite. Now, businesses can have access to real time data indexing, storage, analytics and even server less computing.

Microsoft has done a great job of adding SAP, Red Hat and Dynamics to its cloud platform. AWS offers identical services and offers a ready-made suite for eCommerce websites.

Mobile apps can now shift the weight of storage and real time data access, even remotely, thanks to the advances in cloud computing. Furthermore, real time analytics and integrated AI algorithms are expediting the growth of mass cloud storage for both enterprise and personal users.

Programmers and companies are looking at task and platform specific libraries, frameworks as well as languages to cut down costs, eradicate redundancy and decrease the deployment timeline.

In specific, you would see a competent mobile app development company take advantage of these programming trends:

It takes a lot of time to develop the same app for different operating systems. Here is where cross platform app development comes in handy.

Using methodologies like Hybrid App Development and Rapid Mobile App Development, developers can now retain the same functionalities of the app while writing only one base code.

If you believe it is imperative for you to keep the UX intact along with the features while still ensuring that the app gets deployed on all the platforms in the least possible time, Facebook’s React Native app development can help you with it.

On the other end of spectrum are businesses who are very clear about their target audience and know they want to target only one OS at a time. To these businesses, there are languages like Swift app development for iOS and Kotlin for Android.

These OS specific languages ensure that the quality standards and guidelines are naturally taken care of in the language itself. This actually helps cut down the deployment time, if you are very sure about the OS you want to target.

One of the biggest challenges for businesses have been the user acquisition costs. According to a Statista report, the average cost of acquiring a user to install an app on her/his device is $2.9 for Android and $4.44 for iOS.

New York Times showed a great way to use Instant Apps. They nearly doubled their total app sessions by letting users compete in their daily crossword puzzles without even downloading the app. Gaming giant Zynga developed a bite-sized experience that showed users what they can expect from the new game Words with Friends 2.

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have created a huge impact on the entire app development scene.

Every tech giant is investing in these technologies. According to Deloitte, close to a billion users will create AR content at least once in 2018. Snapchat’s aggressive growth is only a testament to the same fact.

Besides user engagement, both AR and VR have great utility for big ticket purchases. Take for instance the luxury car industry or the real estate industry, where users prefer experiencing the product before buying it. Here, AR and VR can fill a huge need gap.

One of the biggest changes in business models has been the rise of on-demand apps.

Users earlier depended on Craigslist or Yelp to get an indexed list of services. Now, users are looking for more and more personalized experiences in booking even the regular services, like Uber.

One can easily gauge the growth of on-demand apps by looking at the growth of TaskRabbit, which provides several personal services at users’ homes or Instacart, which delivers groceries from the nearby stores to users’ addresses.

Beacon technologies have been around for quite some time now. Many use cases have been developed around using them for location based functionalities. Now, app developers are looking at new ways to utilize the same technology and mobile apps are centric to these new features.

In retail, the Amazon Go is using proprietary technology mostly based on computed vision to enhance the retail experience. One app, an Amazon account and you are good to go. Retailers who do not have this sophistication at their disposal will now be able to compete with Amazon using Beacons.

The utility of beacons would obviously enhance the retail shopping experience. That said, with the right mobile app in place that can utilize iBeacon and Eddystone to garner the right insights when customers shop.

Right from the level of discovery to all the way till conversions, Beacons with the right mobile apps make the user experience more fulfilling and provide businesses with data for more effective marketing.

Going beyond the programming languages and frameworks, chatbots have been the biggest innovation in user experience in recent times.

Chatbots started as simple aggregators of information. The recent developments in chatbots have made this a great opportunity for businesses to make the entire user experience more interactive, conduct user research, generate and convert leads.

With the advent of natural language processing, you can start building a more conversational and adaptive chatbots in the lines of Siri or Alexa. Facebook has started giving out the basic functionalities required to build a chatbot from scratch at zero cost.

As a decision maker, knowing about these technologies even on a primary level prepares you take more informed decisions and be aware of your choices throughout the product research, development and deployment cycle.

These trends are here to stay. The only thing you have to determine is how you can use them to your advantage.