Tag: Mobile app development
The age of mobility – where smartphones and tablets literally define the way we live and not a single person can spend even a few hours, let alone a whole day, without his/her mobile. This is the age that we live in now. Can you even imagine your life without your smartphone?
Difficult isn’t it?
I mean think of all the things you do through your phone now and the number of applications you use, to get things done. Taking into consideration the fast paced business environment that we live in, if you don’t own a smartphone, then you don’t really live.
This trend though, has also been putting lots of pressure on the developer’s end for creating more useful enterprise mobile applications. All companies in the business of mobility have been facing this crunch for quite some time now. Put together with issues like lack of adequate resources, infrastructure, and manpower, the pressure is even more.
Gartner says that by the end of 2017, the market demand for enterprise mobile application development services would surpass internal organization’s capacity to develop them. And by 2019, the sale of mobile phones would reach 2.1 billion units. This only means an even higher demand rate for mobile applications, that too, at the pinnacle of quality and performance.
It gets even more complicated
Apparently, in today’s digital business and work environments, people on an average use at least three different devices as part of their daily routines. And it doesn’t stop there. In the coming years, this number is only going to increase to five and six devices, as technologies like wearables and most importantly the Internet of Things (IoT) become mainstream. Moreover, the employees are also given the freedom to choose the applications, devices and even processes required to complete their jobs. All this increases the pressure on the developers to create different varieties of mobile apps in short time frames. Most enterprises these days, find it a great challenge to produce, deploy and distribute mobile apps at the very fast pace in which they are demanded. Finding and employing developers with all the necessary skills and expertise for the same is an increasingly difficult task, not to mention how expensive it is.
A survey on mobile app development conducted by Gartner in 2014, revealed that a large majority of organizations have developed and deployed only less than about 10 apps and a significant number of organizations did not release any mobile apps at all. This shows the hesitation that most organizations have and the difficulties they face related to resources, tools and platforms, that stop them from releasing more mobile apps, let alone their goal of 100 apps.
Handling the high demand for mobile app development services
In order to overcome such app development challenges and speed up the process of app development, there are certain practices that organizations can follow, as suggested by Gartner. Some of them are:
- Prioritizing app development – Owing to the high demands faced by most organizations, their mobile development teams are overburdened and hence fall short on app quality and timely, effective deployment. It becomes a first-come first serve approach, when it comes to usage of resources, which in turn leads to their inefficient use as well. Often, this lack of prioritization is what leads to the inability to meet demands. The entire mobile team needs to prioritize app development and formulate a better app development strategy. They need to analyze and understand the needs of the different business stakeholders and plan development activities according to their priorities. This helps in clearly defining mobile app development criteria for effective evaluation of mobile projects to a large extent.
- Bimodal IT approach – Adopting a bimodal IT approach, that integrates both innovation and agility to deliver apps more efficiently, can go a long way. It helps to create an agile API layer, that also simplifies the process of connecting mobile apps with different types of data sources.
- Rapid Mobile Application Development (RMAD) tools – RMAD tools help a great deal in filling the gap between demand and supply of mobile app development. Many approaches like drag-and-drop codeless tools, model-driven development, orchestration, code generation, virtualization and the like can be used effectively for rapid development of mobile apps. These help automate certain aspects of coding, which not only saves time but also simplifies the whole process of development, making it less difficult for even people with less programming skills to develop mobile apps and modify them.
- Mixed sourcing approach – Maintaining a full in-house development environment for mobile apps in all hot technologies could be difficult for a lot of organizations, given the increasing demand for the same. It also involves several specific capabilities like UX and UI designing, psychology and cellular coverage testing and the like, which call for experienced hands. Hence, it may be more effective to outsource certain complex and specific app development activities to third parties, who could handle them more easily, and retain the development of the rest. Over time, in-house production skills could improve, but to meet current pressures, this could be effective. Around 55% of organizations are found to be successfully delivering mobile apps using this mixed approach.
In order to keep up with the rapidly growing need for mobile app development services, organizations simply have to do something about their development capabilities, these steps can be a start for increasing efficiency and productivity.
We have seen the rise of certain revolutionary technologies over the past few years, like the IoT, Cloud computing and Big Data, bringing breakneck transformations throughout every industry. Being one of the greatest, irreplaceable inventions in life, the mobile industry is perhaps mostly impacted by all these emerging trends, constantly striving to bring the hottest trends at customers’ fingertips. In a short span of time, the smartphone alone has replaced the need for several other products and services, simply rendering them worthless. Not convinced?
What do you do these days when you need a dress, need to order your favorite food, hire a cab, perform a bank transaction, communicate with someone, or simply wants to entertain yourself with games, videos or social networking sites?
Grab your smartphone, right? Was this the case a few years back, when mobile phones could only place calls and send text messages?!
That’s how the mobile and mobile application industries are evolving. Today, we breathe, eat, sleep and live mobile.
So, how will be the Mobile app industry like, in the coming years? What trends will rule the smartphone application development? Let’s take a look:
More Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality based apps will come to play
AR and VR have been incredible technologies that made our lives resemble those in science-fiction movies, which once seemed impossible. AR has already revealed itself through mobile apps over the last years, from interactive map overlays to virtual showrooms. For instance, the SnapShop showroom app using AR technology lets users evaluate how particular furniture will look in their space. myNav, iOnRoad, Sky Siege are AR based mobile games already out in the market. This year we’ll see more and more businesses, from retail, e-commerce, entertainment, lifestyle to healthcare sectors creating AR based mobile apps to engage their customers and provide them better experience.
VR, though didn’t see a growth as big as AR, is not far behind. The technology that was mostly around entertainment and gaming, is now gaining momentum, with the advent of devices like the Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, and Google Cardboard. The giants like, Facebook investing in Oculus VR (releasing this year) is a hint on how big its market will be.
Read more: Virtual Reality: The Revolutionary Force
Mobile Apps using Artificial Intelligence
Technology giants like, Google, Facebook, IBM and many others are investing in artificial intelligence, thus moving towards more complex computer algorithms. There are quite a few iOS and Android personal assistant mobile apps today that use artificial intelligence for smart decision making and stuff. Google Now and Apple’s Siri are apps having Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and are able to receive and understand direct instructions from the user, which according to many experts are a basic level of AI. The number of apps using AI will only increase in the years ahead.
App Security
Developers were pretty busy last year solving security issues with over 75% of apps that failed to meet even the fundamentals of security/privacy policies. Sensitive and confidential user information like, bank details and SSN become vulnerable if various apps and platforms using these fail to implement proper security protocols. The latest versions of iOS (iOS 9) and Android (Android 6.0 Marshmallow) have considered security and privacy as one of the significant parameters of app development and will continue to be of prime importance to developers.
Cross-Platform Development
Businesses are not just walking past the concept of fixed office spaces and immovable PCs or desktops, but are using varieties of smart devices, like tablets, smartphones, notes and so on, for a flexible working experience. Hence, having apps confined to be used on a single platform will become irrelevant. Apps that can be easily migrated from one platform to the other will be on demand and mobile app development will thus not confine to single platforms.
Read more: Native vs. Hybrid: Things to Know Before Building Your Next Mobile Application.
HTML 5
HTML 5 has been gaining popularity since 2014 for its ease to create hybrid mobile applications that work on multiple platforms. App developers may concentrate on building more HTML5 mobile apps (compared to Native apps) that are portable across different devices, platforms and operating systems. HTML 5 supports off-line data and rich Medias like audios and videos, making them work even when the device is offline.
Read more: Developing Native and Hybrid apps 101
Mobile Apps for 3D Printing
3D printing has been a technology that took the world by storm. With 3D printers becoming cheap and commercially available for affordable rates, the demand on mobile apps for 3D modeling and printing has increased. This year, 3D printing market is expected to rise to a trillion dollar market and we will also see smart apps focused on cloud and mobile CAD, interaction with physical world, and the like.
Beacon and Location-Based Wi-Fi Services
Wi-Fi will provide more than just internet access. Businesses will use beacon technology to understand where their customers are, and engage with them through relevant and personalized content sent to their mobile phones using the Wi-Fi. Beacon technology has reduced the gap between online and offline services in advertising and retail industries. Apple has already integrated the technology in their iOS to communicate with Apple’s iBeacon networks.
Read more: Different kinds of Beacon technologies and how iBeacons enhance customer experience.
Wearable, drones, and smart machines
The focus has shifted from consumer wearable to enterprise wearable this year. With more employees using wearables at work, businesses will require enterprise apps to manage and control efficient usage of these to increase productivity. Drones and robots were mainly limited to the locomotive industry, however, this year, a lot more robots will arrive, that consumers can really take home to simplify their daily tasks. With the drones and robots becoming common in markets, obviously we need to develop plenty of smart apps to make them work.
Read more: Wearable Technology-Dark Horse of Enterprise Workforce Efficiency?
Low Shelf Life Apps
Industries, like, Sports, Entertainment, Retail, and Media, may require apps that will work for a short period of time, until a particular event lasts or so. These are created temporarily for industries for instant gratification and needn’t last forever. For instance, companies may require apps during the FIFA world Cup season, to conduct events or reach out to the fans during that particular period of time. More industries will use such short-lived apps strategy in years ahead. Need to build such an app? Let us help.
Enterprise App Consumerization
Earlier, enterprise apps were built with strong foundation and less importance to the design. However, with more and more employees starting to use mobile devices at work, user experience has become a central factor and enterprise apps are built to look more like consumer apps. The trend has continued through 2014 and is expected to change the way enterprise software will look and will be used.
Read more: Top 5 Enterprise Application Development Trends 2016
In- App Advertising, Purchasing, and Location Based Mobile Advertising
Mobile ads will not be limited to just banners, but various other ad formats will be experimented, video ads leading the line. Studies show that in-app advertising is 11.4 times effective than standard form of banner ads. It will become more common and profound as users spent more time in mobile apps compared to website browsing, and will be a major source of revenue for app developers. This year the ads will mature further by getting the location-based technology, which will help advertisers take the relevant offers to the right customer at the right place and time.
Big Data and App Analytics
Performance tracking and decision making will become even more focused with smart data collecting and evaluating metrics in apps. Developers will concentrate on providing better performance insights to clients through data visualization and analysis. There will be thus more focus on big data and app analytics.
Smart Cities, Homes, and Offices
As more and more things get connected in the Internet of Things, there will be better ways of managing traffic, providing parking solutions, ensuring safety, connecting and controlling homes, offices, vehicles and equipment with mobile phones and so on. App developers will be really busy creating secure apps that will help people control their connected equipment remotely and safely.
mHealth
With more wearables, sensors and tracking devices getting into the medical sector, the mobile app consultations will become more matured this year. Medical field will be largely influenced by the technologies, and apps will be the binding units that will connect healthcare with IT. There will also be dedicated mobile health apps to track health of users, diagnose a variance, alert check-up etc.
Read more: Emerging Trends in Healthcare IT, 5 Pointers to Make Sure Your Healthcare Application is Future Proof, Top 5 Technology Trends Driving the Growth of Healthcare, Healthcare – Gearing up For the Internet of Things
Being one of the leading mobile app development solutions providers ourselves, we are as excited as you about the latest trends in IT, and are constantly evaluating the emerging trends and opportunities to remain the cream of the crop option for our clients. What other trends do you see rising in mobile app development in the coming years? Share your thoughts with us.
Image credits: SnapShop, think3d, bfonics.com, androidpolice, CIO
Enterprises these days, are always looking to adopt the best technologies and applications for their various business requirements. In fact, it is almost inevitable for organizations to use software to automate their processes and improve efficiency so as to gain competitive advantage. Along with it, organizations also need ways to have more sustainable development processes, and the good news is that they have already started to realize it with DevOps. According to a recent research by International Data Group (IDG), there are only 10% of organizations that do not have any DevOps plans in the near future.
Do you think DevOps is that necessary for your business?
To answer that question, it would be worthwhile to discuss a little history of DevOps, how it came into being, and how it is used by businesses these days.
What is DevOps
According to Wikipedia, DevOps is a culture in business enterprises that emphasizes the need for collaboration, communication and coordination between the software developers and other information technology professionals in the organization, while automating the various processes of software delivery and infrastructure changes. It basically aims at promoting an environment, where application development, testing, as well as release, can be more frequent, fast and reliable. In the traditional setup of organizations, there was a lack of integration of these functions with the IT department, which often led to unsatisfactory results. DevOps seeks to bring about a culture, where the processes and procedures in an organization promote communication and collaboration among the development team, the Quality Assurance (QA) team and the IT operations team.
Nowadays, as more and more applications are being built to meet different business requirements, and they are constantly updated to adapt to the changing needs, the processes become seemingly never ending. This is where DevOps would particularly be useful. It accelerates development, testing as well as deployment of applications with the help of tools and techniques that automate tasks for operations, while at the same time give the developers more control and command over the entire application life.
A brief history
It was in 2009 that the term DevOps became popularized through a series of devopsdays in Belgium. Since then, it has been widely used among web-based businesses, like Netflix and Etsy.7 Although, that is not the case now, when enterprises know and have seen the benefits of DevOps and are capitalizing on adoption.
How enterprises are utilizing DevOps now
According to the IDG research, almost 61% of organizations are embracing new strategies and techniques, like the agile development methodology and DevOps in the upcoming year, which is an increase from 48% this year. This only proves the level at which DevOps has grown in adoption and how much popular it is in increasing efficiency. Up to 77% of organizations say that their software development team and IT operations team collaborate frequently, and 56% of them also say that their IT operations team plays an increasing role in the management of outsourced development activities. This again goes on to prove that DevOps is definitely the way to go. With the increased role of the IT team and considering how important their association is with the development team, a combined culture will go a long way.
Considering that DevOps is a whole culture change and not just a kind of technology that can be adopted and used easily, enterprises do need their time to adapt themselves and get used to the new ways of interaction and working.
Michael Rembetsy, VP of Technical operations, Etsy says, “It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort from people at the top and it takes effort from people at the bottom as well. It’s not just the CEO saying, ‘Next year we’re going to be DevOps’. That doesn’t work. It has to be a cultural change in the way people are interacting.”
Why DevOps?
According to the research, almost 60% of organizations still use a waterfall development approach, which is a linear progression through the development stages of a project. It often leads to misinterpretations and failures, as there may be change requests by the client after the entire process is complete.
41% of organizations use an agile development process, which involves smaller and more frequent builds, regular and continuous planning, testing and integration and a more welcoming attitude towards new requirements. It leads to a faster time to market as well. DevOps clearly serves the needs of this approach, as it involves frequent interactions as well. Simply put, it leads to more sustainable processes.
Another reason why DevOps is necessary is because of the rise in demand for innovative web and mobile applications. Since such applications are required to connect and interact with customers and partners regularly, and capture their preferences and needs at all times, there is no such thing as “one-and-done” with them. They are always changing to adapt to the different needs of customers. DevOps helps to shorten the time of productions of these apps. It adds automation and streamlines workflows so that the developers can build, test and deploy applications smoothly. The research report says that 49% of organizations are planning to increase their investment in custom mobile app development, out of which 57% of organizations are planning to mobilize customer relationship management apps, 51% are planning to go for enterprise relationship management apps and 50% of them for field force automation apps. This only means that DevOps is all the more necessary to keep up with the changing environment.
Benefits of DevOps methodology
According to the report, using DevOps can lead to:
- 41% more automated development processes, which can free up a lot of time for other important activities.
- 38% more positive interactions with the operations team
- 38% accelerated time to production
- 38% ability to improve the product for which a developer is responsible
Not using a DevOps approach can lead to problems like, lack of proper visibility into IT operations requirements in the development processes, increased development costs because of redundant jobs resulting from lack of timely communication and the like. Apart from all these, there will be much less collaboration between the development team, the operations team and the business.
DevOps is definitely becoming increasingly prevalent for all the above mentioned reasons. It is indeed better to shift to a more dynamic and interactive culture today, as the already fast paced business environment is rapidly changing to become even more so in future.
As the reign of mobile applications and mobile devices continue, we, as part of this revolutionary trend, have to keep ourselves updated about everything latest in the mobile world, don’t we? Of course we do. We also have to be aware of everything we need to in this regard. I’m talking about mobile applications and their making. Continuing my endeavour to make you guys acquainted about the many processes and resources that go into making a mobile application, here I’m going to give you some more information on mobile application testing.
In one of my previous articles, A winning mobile testing strategy: The Way to Go, I had explained the various steps involved in the process of testing and the article, and Mobile Application Testing: Challenges and the Solution had the major challenges faced by testers.
Now, for those of you who read through the testing process, in case you are wondering “what other kinds of testing are there?”….
Here is a list of the most commonly used kinds of mobile application testing. Do keep in mind that all of these tests are conducted to perfect different aspects of an application. Hence, ideally a combination of some of these would probably be the best way to go.
- Functionality testing – This is actually the most basic kind of testing for any application, as it ensures that the basic functions of the app work as intended. As is the case with any user interface based application, mobile applications work on the basis of several human interactions as well. All of these functions need to be tested for their accuracy. Considering the challenges faced by testers, like the wide range of mobile devices for example, functionality testing is usually a time-consuming and intensive process if it is done manually. However, there are various automation tools available in the market for functional testing as well.
- Usability testing – This is conducted in order to ensure that the mobile app is easy to use and provides a good user experience to the customers. It basically tests the app from three angles:
Satisfactory user experience – The user acceptability level or comfort level of the application and also others affected by its use.
Effectiveness – The level of benefits achieved through the app in comparison to the level of resources expended for it.
Efficiency – The accuracy of the application in terms of its ability to achieve specific goals in specific environments. - Performance testing – This covers testing of performance of the application from the client side, server side as well as network. The client side will focus more on things like, responsiveness of the application, user interface elements etc. It also involves testing with different types of data connections, WIFI, levels of battery consumption etc. There are again a number of tools available to carry out testing in these areas.
- Compatibility testing – This is conducted to see whether the application works as intended in different devices, Operating systems and their different versions, browsers and screen sizes.
- Security testing – This is carried out to test whether the application is capable of storing and protecting information.
- Memory testing – This is important to ensure that the application maintains optimum memory usage throughout its life. Mobile devices usually tend to have very limited memory and the operating systems also have a tendency to stop applications that use too much memory, which might lead to problems with user experience.
- Regression testing – This is done in order to bring to light any bugs or errors that may exist in already built modules of a project after making changes such as improvements, enhancements or configuration changes and the like.
There are also other kinds of testing, like services testing, user interfaces testing, operational testing etc. which are also done in some cases depending on the kind of mobile application. Apart from that, the most commonly used tests are listed above. As a general rule, functional testing is often conducted first followed by performance testing and the rest. Like i said before, not all of these tests might always be conducted in order. It all depends on the application. The basic point is that testing is a huge and significant part of mobile application development, and at no cost can this be avoided.
“You have an app for that”. – How many times have you used or heard this statement lately? Probably a Gazillion times, right. Undoubtedly, it is because of the huge surge in the use of mobile applications and devices for anything and everything in this world. For almost everything you do, you invariably have an application for that. The number of services that are available with an app in your mobile phone has gone beyond imagination levels. While this is good news for the app users, it puts the developers in a tad bit of pressure in creating applications that surpass existing ones. Here we look at some of the latest trends in the area of mobile app development that have been doing the rounds this year and have contributed a great deal in making beautiful apps:
- Rapid Mobile development – As the demand for mobile applications increased rapidly, businesses have been racing ahead in the run for delivering them to customers. This put the app developers on a constant lookout for ways to shorten their app development lifecycles and deliver apps much faster. Now, there are various tools available in the market for rapid app development and we can expect to see many more in the near future. The basic idea is to reduce the time gap between the birth of a concept and delivery of the product. These tools have also proved to be quite effective as well.
- Internet of Things (IoT) and Big data – With 2015 came large amounts of data and the increased popularity of the “Internet of Things”. It means that the data handled by various business enterprises have increased along with the idea of connecting all of their devices and objects. App developers definitely need to take such big data, as well as their analysis into consideration and ensure proper usage and incorporation of these while developing mobile apps. The same goes with the connection theory as well. I would say that it has had a major influence on app development this year. The user interface and the user experience of the apps need to be modified essentially for proper integration with IoT. Users need to have unique user experiences in order to push an app into the market and increase popularity.
- The cloud – The all-pervasive cloud has conquered the world of mobile apps as well. Users these days want a single app to be integrated across several devices, and what better way than the cloud. App developers have been faced with the challenge of making this kind of integration possible without affecting the look and feel of the app. An advantage of this is that the data stored in the cloud makes syncing among the different devices easier, faster and more efficient, which benefits the end users as well.
- Wearable tech – Do I even have to explain how much of an influence this has been in terms of app development? With the launch of the Apple Watch, the race for wearables started and as more and more such devices came in, like FitBit, Jawbone etc. in the fitness industry, the popularity of wearables increased. Now there is a need for developers to create mobile apps targeted at such wearables. Actually not just now, in the years to come as well.
These were just some of the trends in mobile app development that have conquered the industry in a big way in 2015. There are also many other trends worth looking out for as well, like streaming content and digital media, e-commerce, increased use of HTML5, mobile marketing techniques etc. As is evident, these have enough potential to transform app development into a huge industry by itself. They definitely contribute to a richer user experience for users as well.
What other trends do you think have come up in mobile app development this year? Share with us in the comments below.
When would you go for a hybrid mobile application?
When you want your application to be compatible with more than one operating system and you have very less time for developing the application. These are the two basic factors that you might consider while choosing to go hybrid.
Hybrid applications are considered to be a lot easier to develop than native applications, essentially because most of the code, required for development can be reused in different platforms. For the same reason, they cost less and require much lesser time for development when compared to native mobile applications. With all these advantages, your chances of choosing to go for hybrid application development, are pretty high.
Hybrid mobile application development is often assumed to be a one-size-fits-all approach. A single set of code can be reused with minor tweaks across different operating systems or platforms. From an organizational perspective as well, hybrid applications might seem easier. Instead of hiring separate developers for each platform, a single set of developers can do the job.
One-size-fits-all: does it really apply?
However, the one-size-fits-all principle might not be entirely true. For hybrid applications to have access to device capabilities like the accelerometer, the camera etc. they need plugins, coded in the respective native language according to the platform. Now, these plugins, are actually the most crucial part of a hybrid application; without these, they are no better than a web application. There are several risks associated with these plugins though. They are not quite reliable in terms of consistency and sometimes may go missing altogether. This is especially true where the mobile platform for which the plugins are developed, gets upgraded. In other words, when several versions of a particular mobile platform are introduced, the plugins associated with it might get outdated or unreliable. Most often it is halfway through development, focusing on the features of the mobile platform, that you realize that the plugins are missing. Then you are forced to either do away with a feature altogether or code plugins yourself. And like I said, plugins are one of the most essential parts of developing a hybrid application, so without it, the whole purpose of hybrid apps is pretty much unserved.
Another problem associated with hybrid apps is that even though they are easy to develop and deploy, they don’t perform as well as native apps. The look and feel of hybrid apps is also not as smooth and natural as their native counterparts. Again, since they need plugins to work with a mobile device, that needs to be coded in their native language, you will need to spend way too much time fixing them in case of bugs. Also, they use separate webview implementations for different platforms, as they are hosted through each platform’s webview, which is not needed in case of native applications. Native applications can run in an operating system independently. In short, hybrid applications have several dependencies like plugins and webview implementations. They in turn vary according to the platform used for creating the application.
Hence, you really cannot rely on the fact that hybrid apps go with every platform and device, with little tweaks. In order to achieve maximum efficiency from your hybrid apps, you need to make sure that the essential APIs are in place and available well ahead of development.