Top 5 Trends in Mobile App Development

Bangalore: Mobile communication devices have ushered many developments in the recent years. While the year 2010 was all about smartphones and mobile apps, 2011 popularized tablet PC apart from other mobile devices. The increase in the number of mobile users, has led to the increase in the demand for apps which in-turn led to an increase in the demand for mobile application developers.

Priya Viswanathan in about.com brought out 5 top trends in mobile app development. They are:

1. Demand for Business Apps
Business organizations are now adopting mobile devices into its day to day functioning replacing laptops and desktop computers. The change in the way companies handle their businesses has led to the development of Business Apps.
The number of downloads for business apps has risen tremendously and this has generated a good revenue for app stores apart from the developers and the marketers.  

2.  Apps for Mobile Payment
A study done by Gartner Inc. found that the worldwide mobile payment transaction values will surpass US$171.5 billion in 2012, a 61.9 percent increase from 2011 values of $105.9 billion. This strongly indicated that many people prefer to make payments online using their mobile devices. One can now book a movie ticket using their smartphones rather than standing in a queue to book tickets at the counter.  

3. The Mobile Consumer is King
The number of apps in the market today has posed a challenge to the app developers who are trying to get their app noticed in the market.  In order for them to succeed, they would need to build an app which is unique and user friendly. Mobvertisers are using every possible way to attract the attention of the viewers to their app.

4. Emergence of Cloud Computing
The immense popularity of cloud computing has led business organizations to shift to cloud and offer cloud based services. This has also given rise to various enterprise applications which is suitable for any of the cloud-private, public and hybrid. However, developers are concerned with the security and other relating issues of cloud based enterprise apps.

5. Developing Location-Based Apps
The year 2012 saw many smartphones that comes along with location base services. They offer targeted and relevant location based content and this in turn facilitated advertising and marketing.