Over the past few years, IoT has made its presence felt across multiple sectors, including healthcare, retail, and agriculture, providing innovative solutions.
IoT enhances communication and interaction at various levels. The growing demand for IoT applications and their ease of use are key factors driving the expansion of IoT app development services. Statistics predict that by 2030, there will be approximately 25.44 billion IoT-connected devices.
In this blog, we will explore why IoT is considered the future of mobile app development. To understand this fully, let’s first delve into a brief overview of the technology!
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What is IoT (Internet of Things)?
IoT technology is the network of physical things that are developing at a rapid rate. Due to IoT, an IP address, the fundamental of every mobile application, has become stronger. Undoubtedly, this technology has brought the connectivity we always dreamt of.
In simple words, the IoT is one of the modern technologies that help us with nearly every aspect of life. Hence, everything that has internet access can be connected by IoT. For this reason, this technology helps us control our daily-use devices, even if we are not present at home.
IoT has made a meaningful effect on the app development industry, as the data sharing between gadgets makes sure a smooth user experience. Improved visibility obtained from the data sharing has been a result that has considerably improved the mobile apps’ quality in this era. So, let’s check out how precisely IoT is shaping the future of mobile app development!
How is IoT Shaping the Future of Mobile App Development?
Mobile app development has become important for businesses worldwide. It has increased the use of smart gadgets and smartphones. Clients can access every kind of service feasibly through dedicated mobile apps, with customized services.
Thereby, businesses are giving priority to making interest from the clients by providing them with engaging and interactive mobile applications. Let’s explore the top reasons why IoT is one of the future trends in the mobile app industry!
1. Open-Source Development
Open-source frameworks are central to the integration of IoT in mobile app development, fostering transparency and collaboration that simplifies the creation of applications. This increasing reliance on shared digital programs is a key IoT trend for 2025 and beyond. Open-source not only enhances transparency throughout the development process, facilitating smoother business-developer collaboration, but also offers readily available programs that streamline IoT integration.
This approach is widespread, with over 90% of companies leveraging open-source software in their development processes, further driving the creation of sophisticated mobile apps.
2. Connectivity
Moving forward, reliance on traditional connection methods like Wi-Fi, cellular, and Bluetooth will likely become insufficient for IoT devices. Mobile app developers must anticipate this shift and design products capable of independent IoT connectivity. To achieve this, gateway integration will be crucial, acting as a bridge for the unique connection protocols demanded by IoT technology.
While developers are actively working on implementing gateways to enable seamless IoT connectivity, it remains a complex challenge. This is particularly critical as it’s estimated that 41% of IoT devices will depend on cellular networks by 2025.
3. Improved Hybrid App Development Scopes
Native mobile applications, designed for single platforms, are less suited for the multi-platform nature of IoT. Hybrid applications, however, are experiencing a surge in demand precisely because of their cross-platform compatibility, making them ideal for IoT ecosystems. This versatility empowers mobile app developers to enhance user experiences and leverage IoT’s capabilities for seamless interaction across diverse devices.
The integration of advanced coding methods, facilitated by IoT, further contributes to the development of robust mobile applications, offering users access to a range of services through a unified interface. This benefit extends to businesses, enabling them to efficiently gather client data across various devices and platforms. The increasing popularity of hybrid apps, evidenced by a 30% rise in development, underscores their pivotal role in the future of mobile applications within the IoT landscape.
4. More Interactive Apps and Easier Customization
IoT undeniably elevates mobile app interactivity and intuitiveness, unlocking new avenues for customization. This ensures apps remain relevant and feature-rich, adapting seamlessly to IoT functionalities and user needs. By fostering the development of futuristic applications, IoT allows businesses to outpace evolving competition. Furthermore, IoT empowers developers to create easily personalized enterprise mobile apps, effectively meeting the specific requirements of connected devices within a business context.
This capability for personalization, driven by user behavior data from IoT, can significantly boost user engagement, potentially increasing it by up to 50%.
5. Niche Building
While mobile app development adapts to the expanding IoT landscape, a key focus is creating personalized experiences across diverse devices, both simulated and physical. Successful IoT app development necessitates close collaboration between developers and product teams. Furthermore, the development process is evolving, shifting from traditional app-centric functions to device-centric functionalities.
This evolution is driven by the increasing integration of AI into IoT, with automated learning processes becoming essential for comprehensive lifecycle support and personalization. Mobile app developers must therefore master the intricacies of smart, connected devices to build applications that seamlessly bridge both physical and digital user experiences. This future-oriented approach, emphasizing device personalization and AI integration, is projected to be a defining characteristic of over 70% of IoT applications by 2025.
6. Growing Innovative Businesses
IoT has highly influenced the innovation in businesses. Hence, IoT has gifted the rise of more innovative businesses. Mobile applications are the best medium to enhance the benefits of IoT for businesses.
Businesses are concentrating on identifying and fixing the pressing problems of the client sector and creating IoT-based applications to provide feasible solutions. And this can happen through the huge amounts of data gathered by different organizations that have offered a more detailed understanding of businesses for created aimed mobile applications.
7. Location Independence
IoT empowers mobile apps with remote control capabilities, providing true location independence. This means users can manage their IoT systems from anywhere, at any time, even when geographically distant from the controlled environment. This location-agnostic access is particularly advantageous for sectors like smart homes, where devices can be seamlessly managed regardless of the user’s location.
This inherent location independence makes IoT invaluable for custom mobile app solutions across diverse industries, enabling businesses to fully leverage its benefits to meet sector-specific requirements.
8. Enhanced Security Assistance
While the interconnected nature of IoT environments raises data security concerns, IoT itself offers enhanced security measures, making IoT-based apps a trusted choice for businesses handling sensitive data. To safeguard data collected across diverse devices and protocols, IoT necessitates the adoption of robust security protocols. IoT addresses these concerns by providing mechanisms for secure app code and data storage, including hardware encryption.
This comprehensive approach to security is crucial for IoT applications, with hardware encryption and secure data storage becoming essential components in over 80% of deployments. By prioritizing these measures, IoT applications can effectively mitigate security risks and ensure data integrity.
9. Less Human Effort
IoT technology fosters seamless interactivity between connected devices, enabling the integration of advanced features into applications without demanding significant additional development effort. This inherent interconnectivity allows app creators to deliver richer experiences and enhanced functionalities while maintaining similar levels of development input.
By automating numerous processes, IoT effectively reduces the effort needed for both app development and ongoing maintenance. This increased efficiency directly translates into substantial cost savings, potentially reaching up to 30% in app development expenditures.
10. Cost-Efficiency
Beyond enhancing functionality, IoT contributes to improved brand recognition and significantly reduces mobile app development costs. This technology empowers app creators to integrate diverse features in a cost-effective manner. Whether enriching interactivity or fostering innovation, IoT delivers substantial financial savings by enabling efficient feature integration, potentially reducing overall development expenses by up to 25%.
11. Environmental Sustainability:
Environmental sustainability is rapidly becoming a critical driver in technology, and IoT offers powerful tools to address these concerns. Beyond just efficiency gains, IoT can play a significant role in creating a more environmentally responsible future. By enabling granular monitoring and control of resource consumption, IoT facilitates optimization across various sectors. Smart grids, as highlighted with the 15% energy consumption reduction statistic, are a prime example. IoT-enabled sensors and networks can dynamically adjust energy distribution based on real-time demand, minimizing waste and maximizing efficiency. This principle extends to numerous other areas, including smart agriculture (optimizing water and fertilizer use), smart cities (managing traffic flow and waste collection), and industrial processes (reducing material waste and emissions).
12. Data Analytics and AI Integration:
The true power of IoT is unlocked by its ability to generate massive volumes of data. However, raw data alone is insufficient; it’s the data analytics and AI integration that transform this data into actionable intelligence. IoT devices act as continuous data streams, capturing information about user behavior, environmental conditions, device performance, and more. By applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and sophisticated data analytics techniques to this influx of data, mobile apps can gain profound insights. This includes understanding usage patterns, predicting potential issues, personalizing user experiences, and automating complex tasks. The projected 40% increase in predictive analytics in IoT applications underscores this trend. Predictive analytics, powered by AI, enables apps to anticipate future needs and proactively address them – for example, predicting device maintenance requirements, optimizing energy usage based on anticipated weather patterns, or offering personalized recommendations based on predicted user preferences.
Concluding Text
In conclusion, IoT is poised to bring significant changes to the traditional mobile app development process. By leveraging IoT, enterprise mobile apps can enhance the efficiency and productivity of complex business operations.
Furthermore, with IoT, you have the power to manage an entire network at your office from the convenience of your fingertips. Without a doubt, the future of mobile app development will yield even better solutions, provided that app development agencies can implement it accurately.