The biggest app trends 2018

The smartphone plays a huge role in our lives these days, and there are apps to help us with pretty much everything we do. You can use smartphone apps to track you’re eating, drinking and sleeping, to keep in touch with friends and family, to send invoices, make new friends, contact companies, to pay bills, catch up with news, manage projects and much more. It’s said that around 3 billion people around the world are now smartphone owners, with people aged 25 and over reportedly using their devices over 250 times each day, and young people making use of them even more. Many people reach for their smartphones to check the latest news and developments as soon as they wake up in the morning, doing the same thing at night before they go to sleep.

New ideas for apps are being developed all the time as needs grow. Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting and promising trends in the smartphone and app world right now.

Apps you can wear

Wearable devices that work with fitness apps have become vastly more affordable over recent years, with rising numbers of people using their devices to boost their health and meet their fitness targets. Devices now come in all sorts of forms, including wristbands, smartwatches, gloves, trainers and more. There are no signs of the wearable device falling in popularity.

Blockchain

Blockchain is the technology that cryptocurrencies rely on, yet it offers much more than this. Blockchain can be used to record all sorts of things, not just financial transactions and looks set to play a bigger and bigger role in our lives in the coming years, in and out of the office.

Personalising experiences

Personalisation really is on the rise when it comes to mobile apps. More and more companies are offering apps that tailor themselves towards your tastes, preferences and behaviour, including Netflix, Spotify, Apple Music and Airbnb. These services learn from your behaviour to make suggestions based on things you have shown an interest in, tailoring their content to show you things that appeal to you.

Android Instant App

With the Android Instant App, you can view content from apps without actually installing the app in question. This means that you could take a look at app news sections or other features without being forced to make a full installation.

Cloud apps

One problem for many smartphone owners is that they are limited when it comes to internal memory. Cloud-based apps can help them resolve this issue, giving them access to the content and data they need whenever they need it. Dropbox and Google Cloud are amongst the mobile world’s leading players when it comes to cloud-based applications.

Mobile payments

Mobile payments around the world reached over £550 billion in 2017, a rise of around £390 billion in just four years. More and more people are making use of mobile payment services, with the number of companies offering them rising dramatically. Google Pay brought services like Google Wallet and Android Pay into one simple application, with Apple Pay also experiencing substantial success, with fewer and fewer people placing reliance on card-based solutions.

AR and VR

AR stands for augmented reality, with VR being used to refer to virtual reality. Even if you don’t think you have experienced augmented reality before, chances are that you have, even if just when viewing graphics and statistics placed over sports events. Virtual reality has helped gaming evolve massively, with gamers wearing special headsets to become part of the world that they are playing in. In the coming year, AI is set to provide invaluable insights for business owners, whilst delivering substantial improvements to machine learning technology. Apps such as Hound and Microsoft Pix show us just how much ground AI has gained in recent years.

Enhanced security

High-profile data breaches have made smartphone users across the world more conscious and wary about the information they give away. Some reports say around three-quarters of the apps available to us wouldn’t even pass a simple security test. This means developers are being forced to up their game to increase confidence in the solutions they create. It’s hoped that enhanced security will encourage app users to place more trust in the brands they deal with and software they download.

The Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things is a term used to describe appliances that are controlled by the internet such as home heating, washing machines and much more. In the IoT, appliances, devices and objects can communicate with each other and collect data without humans being required to intervene.

Location services

Geographical locations are becoming increasingly important when it comes to apps and smartphones. Companies from all kinds of sectors are using the latest technology to provide users with information based on their locations.

The future of smartphone apps looks very promising indeed. Apps can make lives much easier and enable us to achieve even more with our devices we are all vert excited to see where this amazing journey takes us.

If you would like explore how Appy Monkey can help you create an amazing app such as this one then get in contact.