What’s new for Mobile App Developers in 2019?
We’re progressing quite quickly with operating systems and the battle between OS Share continues between Android and iOS. Where are we heading in the next couple of years and what has changed with App Development over the last couple of years? These a re few questions we are going to try to answer in this blog post.
What’s new in app design?
As the two main operating systems Android and iOS evolve we are seeing each platform steer design principles in a distinct way which is making a cross platform app that conforms to operating system design principles more difficult. If you asked us 3 years ago why the cost of mobile app development was so much higher than web development and what will it be like in 3 years? We would definitely have predicted that the cost would have gone down due to advances in automated processes and more off the shelf apps being available. This, afterall, is what happened to the web so what is the answer to this question? Well the two operating systems have no intention of merging; Unlike the web where the aim has always been about standardisation, the operating systems Android and iOS are competing for custoemrs rather than trying to accommodate them all with both platforms. This has had an impact on the cost of developing apps. You’ve always had to develop an app twice if you want both platforms but now that design principles are changing, the UX of an app has also been impacted and therefore the cost of developing two apps is actually more than it was 3 years ago.
This also has a side effect on the hybrid or cross platform methods for developing an app. Whilst you can still retain shared functionality and save on time, if the overall design principles of the mobile app have not been conformed to then the offered resources and guidance from iOS and Android have to either be compromised or neglected in some way. It seems you have to decide which area you are going to fall short at.
What are the new apps that are being successful?
Someone once said when you start a new business you have to do one of two things; Do something new that no-one has done before, or do something that someone else has done but do it better. The same is true for most things and is also true for mobile apps. But what are the apps that prove to be generally more successful than others. Half of it comes down to the Mobile App Development Agency developing the app, but a lot comes down to the kind of problem your app is trying to solve. The two main categories of apps tend to be based around gaming or productivity. The reality is that Apps that solve a problem and contribute towards your general productivity hold the number one slots for the most amount of time spent using them. The following website gives some insight on this.
What are the current costs of developing apps?
Contrary to speculation, the cost of building a mobile app is higher now than it was three years ago. A large portion of the cost has to be attributed towards the on going maintenance cost to remedy bugs and issues discovered through the fast changing environment it lives in. New operating system versions and design trends being shipped with all the latest iOS versions and auto updates mean a quicker more volatile habitat for an app to survive in. We sometimes use the analagy that buying an app and expecting it to just work with little to no additional effort is like buying a car and leaving it in the roughest part of c entral Brixton for 4 weeks and expecting nothing to happen to it. At Agile App Co, we don’t take on any old project. We prefer to take on projects of more likely success with slightly more development effort than smaller projects, with less development time. For us we would be seeking out projects that are scoped to the 100 development days mark, coming up to nearly £50k cost at our current day rate in March 2019.