By Munish Kumar Sharma, Project Lead – Xavient Information Systems
Technology doesn’t take time to grow into a mammoth money churning enterprise, and the evolution of apps signifies that. Although the app revolution only started a few years ago, this technological marvel has vastly gained grounds, with no signs of slowing down. With the rapid acclimatization of smartphones into our daily lives, organizations are constantly faced with opportunities to radically change how services/ products are developed, delivered and accessed. And hence, newer apps are continuously being developed to facilitate this competition. Amongst all the markets of profitability, India is rising by leaps and bounds.
In the past few years, India stands second in the number of active mobile phone users in the world. Out of the six billion mobile phones in the world, around one billion are being used in India (70% of India’s current population). Approximately 6 million subscribers join this group every month, making India a goldmine for technology. People using smart-phones are demanding better applications one after the other, which in turn creates a huge scope for application development in India. Currently, popularity of Andriod has reached an all new high being an open-source, Linux-based operating system. It is designed in such a way that allows the developers and device manufacturers to alter the software design according to their needs. (Source – https://fugenx.com/scope-of-mobile-application-development-in-future/) Also, iOS is gaining equal footing, with its popularity growing amongst the Indian masses.
Hence, app development is set to gain a great deal of traction in the following ways:
1. From a business’ perspective, development industries are considering Android Application Development as one of the most fertile opportunities to bank on. For this they need to hire well-versed mobile application developers, creating a prolific chance for India to capitalize. India is recognized as big IT hub on a global scale, as software development and service in India is highly cost effective. Android came with the option for dynamic application development at lower cost which rapidly increased the popularity of Android in India and now, developers are swarming in numbers to join the app development bandwagon. This would lead to a greater creation of jobs and renewed source for engineers to opt for software development
2. The full stack developer will be a thing of the past, since there will be far too many technologies and devices for a single individual to be highly proficient in developing all of them. Consequently, software developers will have to specialize in software development areas like APIs, mobile front-end, IoT, back-end, etc.
3. From enabling the mobile channel to perfecting omnichannel, app would develop in all places. With the proliferation of digital interfaces, from mobile and web to kiosks, wearables and chatbots, it’s becoming clear that enterprises must learn how to interact with users across all touchpoints. The fact that the user experience is split across channels is an opportunity — each touchpoint can be exploited for its particular convenience. To develop applications for all of these channels, enterprises are standardizing on a common platform for interaction, even as they customize the front-end experience for each form factor.
4. This not only streamlines development and facilitates reuse, but it also introduces us to cross-channel interactions. For instance, a user may start booking travel on the web, continue her reservation later on her mobile device and receive flight notifications on her smartwatch. Following which, she may access the airport lounge with her smartphone, which recognizes her gold status and unlocks the door. Or, she might verbally agree to pay for her extra luggage while her identity is confirmed in the background by non-obtrusive biometric authentication. Multiple channels work together to create a seamless experience.
5. In terms of mobile applications, Omnichannel touchpoints go hand in hand with developing a common set of microservices (back-end functions) that decompose and isolate features. This allows delivery streams to be autonomous and to auto-scale different components of the application independently, depending on fluctuating capacity demands. Specific microservices can be added to a particular channel experience without needing to deploy a completely new back end, reusing capabilities across channels.
6. Mobile app development is moving in two complementary directions. As the need for moreomnichannel apps grows, technologies for scaling development and deployment become more important — hence the rise of DevOps, microservices and continuous integration. In parallel, users will naturally gravitate to applications that are engaging and help them accomplish what they are trying to do. This means that applications will make better use of user context and technologies that support adaptation such as feature flipping.
Conclusion
The above pointers state that India has a great potentiality in reaching the zenith of app development, which in due time would launch the technological landscape of the nation into global contention.