What’s in store for mobile application development in 2022?

The mobile development landscape has never been more complicated. From the emergence of new development tools, to trying to understand how consumers are changing their mobile behaviors, application development teams have their work cut out for 2022 and beyond.

Businesses rely on the mobile experience to be their means of engaging with customers – yet at the same time, people have become much more wary and disconcerting regarding their interactions with brands.

With all these changes, here at Moove It, we sat down with our Mobile Studio to discuss some of the key mobile development trends that we can expect to see in the coming 12-18 months. Here are four of their key thoughts.

Our perspective on the latest mobile application development trends:

• Start thinking about the impact of the emergence of a new operating system. While every mobile development team is clearly focused on iOS and Android, technology changes rapidly, and this may not always be the case. For example, the open source OS, Fuchsia, was released in May 2021, and then later rolled out to all Nest Hub devices. It may well see rapid adoption should one of the large device manufacturers decide to adopt it. HarmonyOS (HongMeng OS), by Huawei, is another competing OS, with which the Chinese firm is already shipping devices.
• Innovative methods to drive mobile app downloads. According to data from the research company, Gartner, mobile app downloads stalled in 2021, after significant growth earlier on in the pandemic. The authors identify a couple of possible reasons for this, from companies looking to consolidate their apps, to consumers valuing simplicity and wanting to “declutter” their devices. What does this mean? It means focusing even more on the design, usability, and marketing of an app, rather than just the functionality. Moove It’s Mobile Studio has been working with clients on exactly this – how to encourage people to download an app, rather than just using the mobile site which will typically offer a poorer experience.
• Privacy legislation and requirements will continue to become more complex. People care more about their privacy, and the security of their data, than ever before. For example, according to data from Forrester Research, 59% of online US adults say that it’s not ok for companies to track what they are doing across multiple devices in order to provide more targeted advertising. At the same time, to create ever more customized and personalized experiences, businesses need data. Getting this blend right, will be one of the biggest challenges for organizations over the next few years.
• Flutter continues its drive to become the most popular mobile cross platform framework. Google previewed the first beta version of Flutter back in 2018 at Mobile World Congress. Since then, it has become the most popular cross platform mobile development framework. There are several reasons for this – it can help accelerate developer pipelines, given the ease at which developers can see the impact of changes they’ve made. It also offers a truly cross platform approach – where developer teams can build beautiful mobile experiences with just one code base.

Conclusion

Our expectations of mobile experiences have transformed in just a matter of a few years. But creating such powerful experiences is not easy – it’s why we continue to see so many applications, even those from companies with very significant budgets, receiving terrible reviews in the Google and Apple app stores. The good news is that the technologies have now matured to a level where organizations with the right skills, processes, and experience can design and build powerful mobile customer experiences.

Interested in seeing some of the mobile application work we have done? Check out our mobile development consulting page.