4 Mobile Application Development Trends This Year

Written by Brooks Canavesi on August 26, 2015. Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

Developers don’t need us telling them that the mobile application development landscape changes constantly. But let’s pause just for a minute and look at how it’s changing. The best place to start is with the 2015 State of the Developer Nation report from VisionMobile. According to the report, there are 4 trends mobile app developers should be taking note of.

Apple’s Swift

Anyone in the tech industry knows it’s hardly ever a case of “if you build it, they will come.” Adoption of new technologies can take time. So the rapid rise of Apple’s Swift language for iOS apps is worth mentioning. According to the report’s survey of 8,000 developers, one in five of them were already using Swift a few months after its launch.

Growth of Cross-Platform Tools

Mobile application development is seeing an increase in the use of third-party tools. According to the report, 83% of respondents are using the tools for things like testing, analytics and crash reporting. Even more noteworthy, the use of cross-platform tools has increased from 23% to 30% in just six months. Cross platform tools worth mentioning are Xamarin and Oracle Mobile Application Framework (built on Apache Cordova) So what goes into choosing the right tools? Tech execs seem to agree that it’s important to choose a stable provider that will be in it for the long haul.

Enterprise Apps Are Making More Cash than Consumer Apps

Smartphones are flying off the shelves and mobile application development is teeming with activity. But it’s not guaranteed that your app is going to earn much. Developers working on enterprise apps are actually more likely to make cash. 43% of developers working on enterprise apps hit $10,000 per month or more in revenue. Only 19% of consumer app developers hit that milestone. A lot of consumers aren’t too keen to shell out money for apps but businesses seem to be more than willing to pay for software that helps their employees be more productive.

The Internet of Things is Super-Hot

A lot of developers are investing their energy in the Internet of Things (IoT) even though it may take a while to pay off. Over 50% of developers report to be working on some sort of IoT project, and many seem to be doing so as a hobby. And it’s no surprise that the biggest areas of interest right now involve mobile application development, particularly on Android and iOS. To Sum Up the Report It is still early days, but VisionMobile’s report claims a huge upside in IoT for the developer community. Those products with the best software are going to be the most sought after. And developers will become essential to creating competitive apps.

So we get a picture of a mobile application development market that is evolving rapidly in pretty much everything from languages and tools to economics and device platforms. Keeping up with the changes can be just as challenging as doing your actual job. But that’s exactly why mobile is such an exciting endeavor right now.

Want to know which apps are tops for 2015? Check out my blog, 9 Great Apps for 2015.

4 Mobile Application Development Trends This Year

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