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Mobile App Trends Predictions for 2019

At the risk of being marked as ‘just another write up’, floating around the net, on the trends expected to flourish in mobile apps and mobile usage in 2019, we wanted to register our thoughts too. We have been doing beautiful mobile apps for a while now and we think our grasp of the market is as good as any you could possibly bet against us. ;-)Of course, mobile usage has shot up through the roof as experts always predicted. And of course, native mobile app development hasn’t bitten the dust yet as some critics predicted. Such is the nature of opinionated predictions eh?Here is our round-up of technology and practices we expect to dominate in the coming years, not based on opinion but based on solid facts. We will also give you a taste of how you can use one or more of these in your business.

Wearable Technology

WearablesHave you noticed that a lot of your colleagues and your hip family members have been sporting the latest smartwatches lately? Have you seen them read notifications and quick workout statistics from these? This is just a reflection of the worldwide trend. Apparently the number of connected devices worldwide is projected to cross over 830 million in 2020. If you are still skeptical about the potential of this market, be prepared to have your mind blown and just read through the data in this page in Statista which shows statistics on wearable devices.How can this help your business?You need not be a healthcare player to utilize the huge market this has opened up (where of course the necessity is quite obvious). You can flash your local deals to the user if he crosses one of your stores (since most users have GPS on in their wearables), you can entice customers with attractive insurance plans by utilizing their workout data (with their permission of course), and oh well, you can even customize a jacket’s thermal efficiency based on the user’s body temperature. Our imagination can run pretty wild we admit, but these definitely open up new ways of marketing, engaging your user and ultimately drive home your business.BlockchainYour geeky business advisors and magazines must have been flashing this term everywhere in the last couple of years and you might not have fully comprehended the world it opens up for your business. We are here to drive the point across. Did you read our earlier blogs on this idea here and here and here and even more here? Need the tldr version? Blockchain is going to be what internet was visualized to be and partially has been. A shared, robust, durable, secure, decentralized, distributed and continually reconciled system that originally found its origin as a cryptocurrency but has evolved to be applicable to any kind of transaction and data processing in essence.How can this help your business?The use of such a system is evident in areas involving transactions - financial, legal, trading etc. Interestingly system designers are also looking at it for different trackings as well like tracking food from its source through the markets and factories (for ensuring safety), weapons tracking (enabling governments to know exactly the how and the where), tracking medical history through different systems and countries (user would hold the key) and even prescription tracking (for returns and counterfeits). Imagination could really be the only limit to this.ChatbotsThere is a slow and steady growing concern among everyone that installing multiple apps in their phones for doing multiple things is not “natural”. For some repetitive uses, native apps definitely make sense but if the actions your users perform are spread across time periods and different each time, they would rather look for an easier way to get it done than having to install that one app for that one time. Enter Chatbots. Because chatbots offer a much more natural interaction than a traditional point and click website or a touch and choose mobile app. You end up getting a streamlined interface of actual communication. With the huge strides happening in natural language processing, this trend is only going to continue strong. Have a look at some really interesting statistics shared by Facebook here on how the messaging platforms are becoming the new normal.How can this help your business?Frankly, you will most probably have encountered one form or the other of a chatbot by now. We have a summary of some interesting use cases here, the different possible types of chatbots here and a in-depth analysis of voicebots in general here.

Augmented Reality Device

Augmented Reality and Mixed RealityIn its essence augmented reality (AR) is when you overlay virtual information over real life scenes. Pokemon GO is your best example here. It is really useful when you want to get more information or angles of perception on actual real time objects that you see. Mixed Reality (MR) is even more exciting. While it follows AR in what it shows to the user - virtual information over real life scenes - it surpasses AR in its capabilities that it enables the user to influence the virtual world with the real life objects and actions. Intel explains this beautifully here - you can play a virtual video game, grab your real world water bottle, and smack an imaginary character from the game with the bottle. Imagination and reality have never been so intermingled. Indeed!AR is well into its track with a lot of platform level kits and SDKs available in all major platforms supporting it for developers to use. Mixed reality is still in its infancy as it does require a staggering amount of sensing and imaging, but a lot of promising tools are being built (check Microsoft’s work here).How can this help your business?AR/MR is not just for gaming anymore. There are numerous viable use cases in healthcare, education, research, industries and more. For you to really understand the impact AR/MR can have on users, you need to take a look at this weather report. We have also listed a few interesting use cases here.Honorary Mentions:Based on the number of requests we encounter from our clients on different use cases around IoT and data visualization, we safely bet that this trend is going to continue as well. We are excited to note that there are a lot of interesting tools and technology poised to make giant leaps here.Do you know Ideas2IT has been developing mobile apps in these diverse areas for quite sometime now? We have a functional understanding of these domains and more, that is sure to help your business/idea get that power up for being absolutely fabulous. Get in touch.Happy New Year folks, welcome to your future!

Ideas2IT Team

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