On October 19, 2022, Gartner, a global authoritative consulting agency, released ten strategic technology trends that enterprises need to explore in 2023, including: sustainable technology, meta universe, super application, adaptive AI, digital immune system, application observability, AI trust and risk and security management, industry cloud platform, platform engineering and wireless value realization. Alpha Commune tries to clarify “three themes and ten directions” from the perspective of business objectives, which is summarized as follows:

  • Optimization. Enterprise organizations use new functions to ensure the reliability, credibility, security and data protection of the model digital immune system. Such technologies include: application observability, AI trust, risk and security management
  • Extension. Business value often appears in a fragmented form, not a “one-stop solution”, but rather some vertical fragmentation solutions. Therefore, the scenario practice of some technologies is also fragmented, such as: industry cloud platform, platform engineering, and offline value realization
  • Development. There are more exploratory technologies, some of which may be drawn back from the landing scenario, and some are just a concept, which is far from reaching the application level. For example: super application, adaptive AI, metauniverse, sustainable technology

Mainstream mobile application development trend

The development trend of mobile applications in 2022 is constantly updated, from the best use of artificial intelligence (AI), wearable devices, augmented reality (AR) and on-demand applications to the designated teams and the development of efficient mobile application solutions. Some research-based top mobile application development trends are gradually becoming commercial or starting commercial attempts. These include:

1. Integrate 5G technology

With the progress and popularization of 5G technology, many previous attempts to limit the communication bandwidth of mobile experience can be restarted. Through the integration of five technologies, the accuracy and efficiency of mobile devices will be significantly improved. With the development of the IT industry, software development companies are developing in the direction of modern development and providing successful applications from improving network efficiency to traffic capacity with the help of 5G technology. Using 5G technology during application development and testing can provide improved solutions and achieve faster results.

Some areas where 5G applications are relatively rich include: driverless vehicle technology, machine-driven solutions, cloud computing, wireless medical/healthcare services, etc

2. IOT

The Internet of Things represents a growing network of interconnected devices, providing consumers with automatic control and convenience. Smart devices and automatic appliances called smart home are precise examples of Internet of Things technology and mobile application development. The Internet of Things is not a new concept, but has grown significantly with the progress of technology. With the help of the Internet of Things, the popularity of mobile devices in various fields and categories has been increasing, creating endless opportunities.

Users have become accustomed to and have higher requirements for mobile applications. According to a research report, the global Internet of Things market is expected to reach 264 billion US dollars in 2022. Of this, $190 billion is expected to come from mobile application solutions.
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The Internet of Things will be suspended in the next few years to achieve stable growth, while software development is in a leading position in the technology and mobile application market. The number of IoT devices is growing. Statista said that by 2025, the revenue of IoT and other technologies will reach 1.6 trillion.

3. More applications rely on blockchain technology

One of the most popular emerging mobile application trends in 2020 is blockchain, because it allows the design of decentralized databases. Because of its security, no one can access the data of sensitive users by changing the database, so the blockchain application is very safe. By 2021, we will use mobile wallets and convenient payment to help cryptocurrencies. At the same time, DApps (decentralized applications) will also appear on mobile devices.

By 2022, most IT giants and technical experts will follow Microsoft’s example and start blockchain technology through the framework of the Confidential Alliance (Coco)

4. Mobile commerce

Mobile commerce is the key. It is indispensable to list any trend of mobile applications. It is this trend that has led to changes in mobile application solutions in 2022. Since 2020, it has been developing rapidly.

Mobile e-commerce features are the preferred exposure way for customer business promotion. Every day, we will see many new mobile applications. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the ratio has also increased exponentially.
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Mobile application development challenges

The progress of technology and the improvement of people’s sensory experience have also increased the difficulty of software development, mainly including:

  1. There are many mobile phone operating systems: Android, Windows phone 7, Windows phone 8, iOS, Symbian S60, UIQ, Windows Mobile, Linux, Brew, Blackberry… It is extremely difficult to overcome the differences of different mobile phone platforms and achieve uniform coverage of applications;

  2. Mobile phone development is difficult: developers are scarce, the cost is too high, the progress is too slow, the wireless network is too complex, and there are too many barriers;

  3. Software or Internet companies will undoubtedly lose more than they gain if they invest their energy in areas that are not their own strong points in order to realize mobile applications.

  4. The industry needs a professional role to solve various problems in the development and application process, encapsulate complex problems simply, and make various heterogeneous packages transparent, so as to reduce the threshold for everyone to enter this market.

Mobile application development middleware

With the continuous expansion of the mobile application market, the market of mobile development has developed rapidly. The emergence of mobile middleware undoubtedly provides a perfect solution. Its characteristics are:

  1. Cross-platform: Middleware systems are known as cross-platform, which can be applied to different platforms in one development.

  2. High threshold: develop mobile applications using WEB development technology (HTML+JS+CSS) or updated applet technology, which greatly reduces the threshold and improves efficiency.

  3. Company transformation: software and internet companies use middleware systems to develop mobile applications. They are fully playing their original strengths, and do not need to invest any resources to learn new knowledge.

  4. Professional people do professional things: The principle of mobile middleware is to package native functions into simple APIs. Developers only need to know how to call these APIs to complete mobile development.

Challenges and opportunities of mobile development platform

Challenges and opportunities of mobile development platform In 2022, business application development is being simplified. There are many products called mobile development platform, and research and development efficiency can indeed promote the improvement of research and development efficiency in a certain field. However, with the application of a series of technologies such as applications, software, tools and cloud infrastructure, developers expect the mobile development platform to undertake more integrated research and development capabilities, If we continue to keep our “one mu and three quarters”, we will probably go to the edge of the market and eventually die out.

Fortunately, with the development of mobile application development, hardware facilities and some cutting-edge technologies, many technical capabilities can be deepened and improved in some fields. The mobile development platform only needs to find the right products to jointly serve the market, and then there will be a 1+1>2 service effect. The most important thing is to solve the enabling problem of “connection - cross-end development capability”, that is, the use of middleware. The author lists some of them here, just to provide you with a “fuse” type of thinking

  • Flutter: Flutter is Google’s mobile UI framework. Flutter’s rapid development, expressive and beautiful UI and performance similar to this machine have attracted a large number of users.
  • Ionic: is the fastest growing and leading open source framework for cross-platform application development. UI component libraries and tools optimized for mobile devices help to quickly build interactive applications.
  • React native: React native, developed by Facebook in 2015, can help enterprises build native applications using Swift, Objective C, Java and other languages.
  • FinClip: FinClip is a set of applet container technology, also known as applet sandbox Runtime/Engine. It provides Runtime based on browser kernel, adopts dynamic language (JS) and declarative view construction (XML), and is compatible with Internet mainstream applet technology. It can use DSL framework based on Vue and react. Unlike Flitter, React, Xamarin and other cross-platform platforms, FinClip is strictly a container technology. Not only does it not conflict with cross-end platforms, but it can also be perfectly integrated. In the mobile end cross-platform development framework, no matter the small programs developed through Flutter, Taro, kbone, etc., can run in FinClip.
  • Apache Cordova: Apache Cordova is a famous cross-platform application development framework that uses Web technologies, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript
  • Xamarin: Xamarin is an extension of the. NET platform. It was once the most trusted and favorite framework for developers and enterprises (none)
  • Sencha Touch: help developers build cross-terminal applications for mobile and desktop systems through the powerful SDK and HTML5 toolkit. It allows developers to create animations and functional user interfaces, which makes the platform an ideal choice for enterprises. Other advantages
  • Adobe Phonegap: With the support of open network technology, Adobe Phonegap is widely used to build excellent applications. With the ability to quickly create applications using HTML, CSS and Javascript, you can create magical applications, making this platform one of the best frameworks for cross-platform application development

The future of mobile application development platform

In the past few years, many exciting and promising developments have been made in the field of mobile application development. Designers, creators and developers constantly put forward innovative and forward-looking solutions for daily problems. Similarly, they continue to iterate and gradually improve the established ideas to improve the user experience of mobile users. Whether it is machine learning, cloud computing integration or augmented reality, today’s trend seems to affect the growth of mobile application development in the next decade. The mobile application development platform should give full play to its “integration” and “connection” capabilities in the context of the technology explosion, find better products on the market, and work together to improve the efficiency and experience of developers.