Mobile application development is a hotter industry than ever. According to Google, Play has 1.5 billion downloads a month from its application store for the popular Android platform.
To succeed businesses need to be more in tune with their customers than ever. One way to miss the mark with your customers is to develop one-size-fits-all applications and not considering the differences of each platform. Savvy companies will adapt their application offerings to the particularities of each platform. When it comes to Google’s Android the Android application development trends will be driven in great part by the arrival of Android 5.0 (Lollipop).
Companies looking to build an Android application in 2015 should examine these trends and features and make sure to discuss them with their Android application developer.
Notifications
Notifications have been improved allowing users with the ability to see and interact with some notifications without having to unlock their Android device. A sound notification strategy should include this new functionality to separate your Android application from your competitor’s.
Material Design
With Android 5 Google introduces Material Design. Google has upgraded many their popular applications such as G Mail to this new design style. Android users will expect other applications to be designed in line with Material Design standards.
Wearables
This year sales of wearables such as smart watches and personal fitness devices are going to explode. The release of Apple Watch April will increase interest in all smart watch offerings including Android devices. Android Wear was recently updated and has improved usability. If you are planning on building and Android application you should consider including Android Wear support.
Keep in mind that with Android Wear your applications can do more than just show notifications. Over the course of the year we are sure to see several innovations as developers work to make their apps integrate with wearable devices.
Connectivity
Android 5 features are enhanced with Bluetooth Low Energy device support, this includes allowing an Android device to act as a beacon for other devices. Retailers should pay special note to the connectivity features when planning apps and should evaluate ways to utilize this improved sharing capability.
Mobile app development is a rapidly growing industry that continues to evolve year each year. In 2014, we saw incredible growth in the industry. Businesses looking to improve their current mobile offering or looking to hire an iPhone application developer or Android app developer should be sure to consider these trends when starting their project.
User Experience
User experience will become even more important in 2015. With the number of smart phones, tablets and mobile applications growing every day, user experience becomes an even more important consideration. With more and more apps to choose from, businesses releasing mobile applications need to be careful not to turn customers away with an app with a poor user experience. Good usability can be worth its weight in gold in the mobile app world.
Mobile Payments
With powerful sales numbers coming out of countries all around the world like 40% of retail e-commerce sales in the UK in 2014 being made on a smartphone or tablet (BizReport), mobile is more important than ever to businesses. Using a mobile phone to pay instead of debit or credit cards will make rapid growth over 2015 and businesses not prepared to accept payments via this method will find themselves losing business.
Internet of Things
The Internet of Things is growing incredibly rapidly with more and more people connecting more devices every day. The application market will further evolve as integration with additional devices continues and clever companies take advantages of the many new opportunities.
Wearables
The Apple Watch is coming to market in less than a month and developers need to consider creating apps for not only the iPhone and iPad but also the Apple Watch and other wearable devices. Developers can extend their app’s functionality to work with Apple’s wearable device and increase engagement with their audience. While most of applications for wearable devices so far have focused on health care and fitness, that is about to change this year, as we will see businesses releasing apps to improve productivity.
Beacons
With beacon technology, location based services become more powerful than ever. Apple’s offering iBeacon extends location services for those with iOS devices. With iBeacons, iOS app developers and retailers can target customers in a specific location. Apps interacting with iBeacon will be on the rise in 2015. Retail establishments and other businesses are installing iBeacons to share information with users with Apple devices. Beacons will change the providing of locally-focused content. Businesses should focus on creating apps utilizing this technology to provide information and offers to consumers.
comScore recently released a new report highlighting several key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry that companies considering developing mobile applications should consider.
Apple is ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 39% of the market share. Samsung follows in second place with a 23% of the market share, HTC is in third with 8.7%, Motorola follows with 7.8% and LG comes in with 6.7%.
Android continues to led as the top smartphone platform with 52% of the market share. Clearly neither of these platforms can be ignored when it comes to mobile application development.
The most interesting point from the new comScore report is the growth of the U.S. smartphone market itself. 141 million people in the U.S. alone now own smartphones (59% of the market, as of the end of May 2013). This number is up 6% since February 2013 making for some incredible growth numbers.