The mobile development landscape is evolving at a quicker pace than ever with explosive growth in almost every area including mobile app and web usage, mobile commerce, enterprise apps, “Internet of Things”, wearables, data-driven mobile services (Big Data), and omni-channel retail.
The Internet of Things
Today’s mobile apps must be able to act as a controller for a myriad of software systems and hardware from small appliances, security systems, to climate control. That means being able to interact with vendors’ interfaces and APIs.
Wearable Devices
Mobile devices are being designed to read data from their user. It used to be that the term “mobile device” implicitly referred to a phone, but now we’re seeing the arrival of watches and other small devices.
Motion UI
Bolstered by frameworks like the Polymer and the Foundation for Apps project, visual feedback that uses animation is becoming more commonplace. Technologies such as Sass mixins, CSS animations, and transitions are being utilized to make some really eye-catching effects.
Single Page Applications
The transition from multi-page websites to single page applications (SPA) has been ongoing for a couple of years now. The goal of SPAs is to create a smooth browsing experience like that of native desktop apps. All of the processing code for the page is loaded only once and the view content gets changed dynamically through JavaScript.
Hybrid Applications
A hybrid application combines the best parts of both native and Web applications. Whereas native applications are developed for a specific platform and installed on a computing device, Web apps are developed to run on multiple platforms and served over the Internet to a browser.
Increased Emphasis on Security
This is not surprising, in light of the security breaches that have transpired over the past couple of years. Perhaps the most publicized was the posting of celebrities’ private photos on the 4Chan site by hackers – photos that the stars thought they had deleted!
Enterprise Mobile Apps
Enterprise mobile apps represent a new class of apps built to work with big data and analytics. They allow employees to continue working wherever they go. Some have criticized this trend for blurring the line between work and home life.
App Monetizing via Advertising Networks
Mobile advertising has not been a boon for app developers in recent years, earning laughably low revenue and click-through rates. But that’s been starting to change. More lucrative advertising networks are offering a great variety of monetization models to help developers maximize the revenue of their mobile apps. That being said, the proliferation of ad blocking apps is biting into app makers’ bottom line.
