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Mobile app trends 2024

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mobile app trends
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2020 is not only the year of pandemics and self-isolation but also the year of cool mobile apps. Let’s see what mobile app trends are coming in the next year!

Why should you pay attention to mobile app trends? Mobile applications are actively integrated into our lives, the market is growing, and so are the requirements’ for new products. 

Something is trendy, something is out of fashion, and something is eternal. Now you need to do everything quickly — it’s not a secret 🙂 MVP will help you dig around. What else? Could 2020 be able to bring something new, and what should a young startup add to their mobile app to make a cool product?

Internet of Things (IoT)

mobile app trendsAn app that helps users control their smart homes

If you thought that pervasive smart devices can only be in the distant future — no way! In the USA and Europe, things like Smart homes are familiar occurrence. Smart technology can even find your escaped pet! It works very simply: smart devices are paired with a mobile app and can be controlled with a phone or remote control from anywhere in the world. In the modern world, the number of followers of the ‘smart devices’ faith is growing, so the trend is still relevant.

What’s cool for a startup owner? The Internet of Things covers more and more areas of our life. With it, you can track the user’s needs and optimize the operation of systems and machines in different industries in real-time. If there is something to automate in the sphere, IoT will appear there. For example, thanks to IoT, you can track parcels. There are many more reasons to develop IoT applications in 2024. Check out our article about it.

Cross-platform development

Competition is growing every day in many areas, and if you have an idea for a startup — you need to validate it quickly. Native mobile app development takes a lot of time and money, but the product may not take off. So, it is worth making a choice in favor of cross-platform. Due to the common code base, development for iOS and Android and releasing your product on two platforms at once takes less time and budget. Plus, apps are updated internally — you don’t need to add a new version to the AppStore and GooglePlay.

What’s cool for a startup owner? We have already mentioned that cross-platform development is twice as fast as native development, but you can include parts of the React Native code even in ready-made native apps. This way, Instagram (originally developed natively) added push notifications, and post promotion to their app.

mobile app trends

Wearable devices

Where the development of wearable devices is, there is also the adaptation of apps for them. The most striking examples of wearable devices — smart watches, fitness trackers, and smart rings. For iOS, it’s the WatchOS platform, and for Android — WearOS. Usually, apps on Apple Watch/Xiaomi Mi Band are associated with apps on devices, In the future, the operation of such devices will be autonomous, without linking to a smartphone.

What’s cool for a startup owner? The separated app for Apple Watch is not yet said at every step. You have the opportunity to be the first in this field. Stand-alone devices allow you to save your work, even if you don’t have a phone at hand. A system of frequent notifications will keep the user’s activity on a favorable side.

mobile app trends

App clips

A new feature of iOS 14 — App clips.They allow you to get quick access to one of the app’s features. Quick, because instead of downloading a full-fledged app, you can use one particular service. The trick is not to download the full application, but to use it only to get its service. If you need to book a bike or get acquainted with the restaurant menu — just scan the QR code. After that, the app will delete itself from your phone. Works only with Apple devices so far.

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What’s cool for a startup owner? Users now don’t want to download an entire app for the sake of one action, so if you want to make their lives easier — simplify this process. Previously, to use the service, you had to go to the app store, find what you need, and wait for it to load. Now it’s all replaced with one click — users will appreciate it!

mobile app trendsMobile app trends: mini-apps with quick launch

Biometric authentication

You’ve probably paid for purchases many times with the help of TouchID and FaceID inside apps and in real life. The facial recognition system is another option. When a security guard asks you to show your documents and you’re not sure if you took them — there may be difficulties. The face recognition function will allow you to get information about a person and speed up this process. A good example is Amazon Rekognition. It is a deep video and image analysis service to search for and match people’s faces. You can use it to identify people, situations, specific actions, text, and inappropriate content.

What’s cool for a startup owner? These statistics can be used for marketing purposes. For example, the system will remember that a certain number of people ordered the same cocktail in a bar, or vice versa, no one orders a specific position. This feature will help the owners of establishments to further improve their service.

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Super apps

Why super? Because this is an app that combines several applications at once! A single ecosystem with everything in one place, a mixture of everything that a user might need.

mobile app trends

One example of a super app — Spanish startup Glovo. Through it, you can order food, go to the pharmacy and deliver your item to another place (or vice versa, it’s up to you 🙂 You don’t need to leave the app and download multiple apps for different purposes, because now you can do everything in one. Cool!

What’s cool for a startup owner? One way or another, the latest mobile app trends lead to an increase in app functionality. We believe that the emergence of super apps will conduct to competition in the context of a single niche. The best ones will be those where the users can switch from one service to another as seamless as possible

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ARM revolution 2.0

mobile app trends

Mobile app trends are also actively influenced by the emergence of new technologies in general. In November, Apple presented new models of computers with their own processor on the ARM architecture — M1.

This transition means that you can move apps from iOS to MacOS without changing them. Apps are already adapted to the new architecture. Mobile and desktop development will become identical in the Apple ecosystem. Apps developed for the iPhone will also work on a Macbook, for example. So, if you have a laptop with an M1 processor, you can go to the AppStore, download a game for iPhone and launch it on your computer.

The line between iOS and macOS becomes clear.

What’s cool for a startup owner? Apps developed on iOS will be available on all devices. Previously, applications were made separately for iOS, and separately for macOS. Apple, in turn, provides a new ecosystem — the basis of tools that allow an app built for Intel to work on M1.

mobile app trends

Summary

Cross-platform mobile app development is actively developing and continues to do that because customers are interested in validating their hypotheses quickly. Switching to new processors will erase the line between different development approaches. The introduction of IoT automates more and more processes.

Simplifying everything is now the main trend in the world of digital products. Did you notice? All the mobile app trends that we have listed have one important similarity —  their goal is to make the user experience more exciting and faster. At the same time — acceleration and optimization of life processes. Times change very quickly, it is not permissible to be irrelevant — compliance with trends is vital if you want to launch a cool product.

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