Top 5 Trending Technologies for Mobile Development

The past decade has witnessed a change in how people access and disseminate information. With the rise in mobile applications, more people now see smartphones as an integral part of their daily life. To remain valuable, corporate entities and businesses are investing in cutting-edge mobile technologies to help them key into their rapidly changing consumer base.

Most tech stacks, they’re equipped with capabilities that provide improved speed and performance for businesses to offer an improved service. Want to key into the latest mobile app development trend? Let’s educate you on what they are:

1. Machine Learning and AI

Most mobile applications use AI technology one way or the other. Consumers love when a mobile app is intelligent and can be personalized to suit their intricate needs. AI has been credited with being able to automate personalization, increase the productivity of businesses, and significantly lower operational expenses. Beyond this, businesses also use AI to automate customer inquiries for mobile applications in a way that reduces the need for additional manpower.

Also, as robotic process automation powered by AI can undertake some processing activities, it reduces the occurrence of mistakes in app development tasks. Examples of ML and AI features used in mobile development are:

• Sentiment classification and recognition.
• Face detection.
• Image and text classification.
• Image recognition.
• Predictive maintenance.
• Speech recognition.

2. Cross Platform Mobile Development

There’s an increase in the use of cross-platform apps, as it aids in creating mobile applications that are compatible with multiple mobile operating systems. Originally, mobile applications must be developed individually–for example, if you want to create an application on Android and iOS, then you’ll have to create them separately.

However, with cross-platform applications, you can simply write codes using a stack, and host them on as many operating systems as you desire. This is particularly helpful when you want to create an MVP, or you need a tech stack that guarantees quick time-to-market.

Tech stacks you need to create cross-platform applications entail:

• React Native,
• Flutter,
• Titanium, 
• Xamarin, 
• And more! 

Amongst these options, the most prominent is React Native and Flutter. The developer community is divided on which is the best among these two, however, with demand for React Native edging out Flutter, it’s believed that React will be the chief cross-platform technology in years to come. For a proper understanding of which is better between React Native and Flutter, then you should read this article on React Native vs Flutter.

3. Cloud-Based Mobile Applications

A cloud-based mobile application is one that’s deployed in a cloud environment, rather than the traditional local server. With the cloud computing market expected to grow at a CAGR of 20% from now till 2029, it’s expected that this kind of app is bound to remain a major trend now and in the future. 

Cloud-based apps are a trending stack primarily due to their barrage of benefits. Some of which are: 

• It helps to minimize startup cost,
• Cloud-based applications can also be accessed without necessarily downloading or installing the application,
• Users are now mandated to download updates, 
• Cloud-based applications are easily scalable.

4. Dependencies

A Software dependency is a package or library of codes that developers can reuse within a software. Due to an increase in the use of frameworks, libraries, and external APIs, the use of dependencies has steadily been on the rise, and this is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

Although software dependencies have revolutionized mobile app development over the past decade, they introduce some significant risks to the application. Open Source dependency is the most significant area of concern, as organizations have to rely on external coders to write and maintain these dependencies.

However, by comprehensively monitoring dependencies, particularly non-transitive ones, you can secure your application from potential hacks that might occur in this technological innovation.

5. No-Code & Low-Code App Development Environment

No-code and low-code environments are development platforms that allow users to create mobile applications with minimal or no knowledge of programming languages. Through its drag-and-drop tools, users can create software quickly.

Although both ease the process of developing mobile applications, they differ slightly. No-code helps users create mobile apps without inputting any line of code into its environment, while low-code requires minimal code–usually HTML and Javascript for actionable buttons.

Some common examples of low and no-code tools include:

• Bubble,
• Knack,
• Quickbase,
• Airtable,
• Zoho Creator.

Although low-code environments have rapid development time as software development is 10x faster, it offers several demerits. Some of its cons include limitations in personalization, and a lack of capacity to develop highly complex solutions.