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.
As of last fall, 52 percent of the time consumers spend online was via mobile applications, according to new data from comScore Inc. 40 percent of time spent online was via web browsers on desktops or laptops and 8 percent spent via web browsers on smartphones or tablets.
The statistics show that most consumers prefer the richer experiences that can be created with mobile app development.
There are several factors that contribute to the growth in mobile application usage. These include the increased usage of devices with large screens, new technologies and, most importantly, according to Andrew Lipsman, vice president of marketing and insights at comScore, access to faster 4G wireless data connectivity.
“Prior to 4G, browsing the web or using apps on your smartphone was slow and clunky, and consumers generally used apps only when necessary; the average consumer was not sitting on their couch or on the go heavily using mobile apps,” Andrew Lipsman says. “In the last two years, though, smartphones have become the primary platform consumers use to consume content and shop, and 4G connectivity is a big part of this movement to mobile devices and apps.”
Beyond that the apps themselves have improved. Businesses are improving their mobile applications and giving users better experiences which is helping fuel the growth. Which along with a change in behavior where we see people actively shopping or social networking while watching TV or riding a subway to work makes mobile applications incredibly important to businesses.
It is imperative that your mobile application is giving your customers the positive experiences and not turning them away.
Juniper Research estimates in a recent study that mobile phone and tablet users will make 195 billion mobile commerce transactions per year by 2019. This represents a huge jump over the 72 billion mobile commerce transactions expected this year.
With smart phones saturating the mobile phone market there will be an expansion the use of the features on these devices. Juniper’s report expects to see the highest growth rates in the NFC sector, “Here, usage is expected to be buoyed by the launch of Apple Pay, together with a host of anticipated deployments by banks using solutions based on HCE (Host Card Emulation) technology.”
Juniper is expecting to see the largest increase in transaction volumes will occur in the digital goods sector, where they foresee a “surge in micropayments for in-app purchases, notably within arenas such as social gaming.”
As businesses improve user experiences for mobile applications during the mobile application development process, customers will be more comfortable making purchases and not only volumes of transactions will increase but also amounts. But beyond the applications them selves there are a number of factors that will drive growth. Industry innovations will also push the growth of mobile transactions as Walgreens mentioned its mobile wallet payments doubled after Apple Pay came out. Additionally once we see facilities for NFC payments in quick-shopping locations, such as at gas pumps, the growth will skyrocket.