Full Stack's
2021 Technology Trends
Trend Insight 4 - Mobile technologies continue their drive into a vital commodity and an 'in-place' assistant to user-intent
It seems strange to think that mobility and mobile software have become even more relevant when so many of us are locked down. For years, Full Stack has seen mobile software as a multi-context environment. It is as likely to be used on the couch in the evening, like first thing in the morning. 2020 drove that home, as mobile app usage continued to soar. Many productivity apps saw blended-use between their desktop, web and app clients.
The convergence of apps and applications on the Mac/iOS platform is still be seen. Apple's development experience remains a complete mess. Apple has been an unignorable juggernaut globally, their disdain and dismissing of app store developers remains a concern. Businesses who wish to place their products on the store remains a concern of ours as well.
We'd want to say that this will eventually catch up with Apple, but that seems to be a losing bet. Full Stack recommends that those businesses targeting the Apple Store test their business model and plans with what is possible under the App Store guidelines.
The difficulty with which apps are developed has diminished in the last 12-24 months. Still, challenges remain, particularly in the way users have changed their usage patterns. They expect them to assist them as necessary, and are less a 'channel' the tune into on their phones, and more like a background tool to be pulled as needed.
Progressive apps have not taken off as we expected they wouldn't. However, semi-native tooling for apps have made some progress, but are still not as performant as pure native apps.
Even as technology has improved, apps remain a high analysis and consultancy endeavour. The app development sector remains riven with the problem of 'an uber of …" or "an app that does…". This is similar to the way websites were seen a magical before their commodification in the mid to late 2000s.
In 2021, we believe the apps that win will be the apps that place the user-intent at their heart. Winning apps won't try to overload users with functions better handled over the web or other contexts. With sensors and features of phones largely stabilised, this year will provide a time for improvement of existing mobile investments, and for the first time a mature platform environment for late adopting businesses who are looking to build their first mobile software with an experienced development partner.