When it comes to developing mobile apps, no doubt the Android operating system gets all the attention, an attention that is well deserved. 

Are you an entrepreneur who is looking forward to making or getting their mobile app developed?  If yes, then you surely need all the deep insights to know about the latest android app development trends.

Let’s dig in for some stats and read on further to discover the popularity of Android apps and the sector’s trends.

• The fact is that today, Android is one of the most vitally used mobile OS that has captured almost 85% of the market share.
  
• The Google Store has 3.04 + million applications, that range from web browsers, daily tools, social media platforms, complex games, enterprise mobile apps etc.

These figures clearly state that the app developers need to be aware of the hottest trends in mobile app development and incorporate them in their Android apps at the earliest, simply to provide users a unique experience.

Top Android Application Development Trends To Watch Out In 2021

The android apps continue to see implacable changes, that are primarily dominated by the user experience and constant innovations brought in by Google. As an entrepreneur, you would need to exemplify these trends for staying ahead of the competition.

1. Android Instant Apps

Although instant Android apps are not very common, slowly and surely, these app display types are picking up the pace. Android Instant app provides software developers with Android Instant Apps SDK and App Links Assistant that permits them to build mobile solutions from scratch or convert the existing apps into Instant Apps.

A working example of the type can be seen through the following – the Instant app allows users to try different games on the applications without installing that app on the device, exciting right?  The advantage of these apps is that they are compatible across all gadgets, require less storage space, and have a pleasant user experience and user interface.

Instant apps are the future and one of the biggest trends in mobile app development that helps the user use the app without actually compromising on space on their smartphones. This is the technology that is designed to drastically help and push the adoption of multiple sectors like eCommerce and games further to secure a place in top android app development trends of 2021.

 2.  Navigation Component

Navigation refers to the multiple interactions that allow the user to move around in the different sections and app’s content pieces. Android jetpacks come with components of handy navigation that helps the developers to implement the navigations. The implications could range from a simple button, click to an intricate pattern such as a navigation drawer. 

The navigation component’s further benefit is that the component allows a predictable and consistent user experience, as the developers who implement them, follow the stated navigation principles. 

3.  Blockchain Technology 

The blockchain technology has been making rounds for many years; however, it has finally come into action. The blockchain technology provides the enhanced solutions of the decentralized app development that eliminates any unauthorized access and pushes transparency. 

The blockchain technology market is said to grow at 62.73% CAGR by 2026 making $52.5 billion. Decentralized apps (Dapps) are an open source, smart contract based software applications that run transactions on blockchain. These applications run on decentralize blockchain and the data cannot be changed or erased in it. These apps are the future of mobile app development; they enable faster payment, reliable data records, and are tamper proof.

With the help of blockchain technology, an android app development company can maintain robust security protocols. This inclusion is fast becoming a part of the trends in android development especially in the financial segments such as currency exchanges, banks etc.

4.  Google Assistant/Chatbot

In the coming years, we will see that many business owners would be keen on integrating their app services with the Google Assistant. The primary advantage of investing in such an integration is that it provides users with faster ways of accessing the app directly. By using the Google app actions, the users get access to an app’s deep-link which allows them to perform specific activities inside the application from the Google Assistant.

Google, in 2020 announced that they will release a new feature for google assistant at CES. The new feature called “Scheduled Actions” will permit users to communicate with smart devices through google assistant like turn on/off a smart device, make a coffee, etc. The feature will be capable of controlling 20 home devices including lights, coffee machines, AC units, and many more.

5.  Multiplatform Development Through Flutter

Google has introduced a new technology naming Flutter, which is being touted as the future of android development. Flutter is a cross-platform framework that helps in developing beautiful apps with a single codebase.

Many developers have been selecting this platform to build mobile apps due to its flexible nature. The primary reasons to choose Flutter are that it is effortless to learn, has a native design, etc. 

It is one of the preferred frameworks for minimum viable product development. This means that instead of spending extravagance on two different apps, you can quickly build an app on native platforms such as iOS or Android.

With the latest update Google took flutter beyond mobile and to the web. Flutter developers are now able to target macOS, Windows and Linux and other embedded devices. The desktop support provided by flutter also includes plugins that support various platforms.

The new Flutter and Dart update have been released with Substantial Performance Improvements from its contemporary releases. Flutter is prepared for creating apps for iOS, Android, Fuchsia, web & desktop with new platform support. Moreover, they are in talks with Ubuntu for Linux apps, Microsoft’s Android Surface Duo, and Windows 10X which will be made accessible soon.

Some prominent progressions made in Flutter in 2021-21 are:

• decreased size and latency
• less janky animations, and quicker treatment of UTF-8 strings
• mouse cursor support
• new widgets such as Interactive viewer making pen
• zoom and drag-n-drop
• range slider and date picker revamped
• integrating flutter to the current application made suitable with Pigeon
• improved help for Metal on iOS, and new Material gadgets.

6.  Internet of Things

The key mobile app development trends 2021 is the implementation of the IoT (Internet of Things). In Android, these trends end up translating into many of the Android things that allow the developers to build the devices on the top of the known hardware platforms such as Raspberry Pi. The best part is that developers do not require any prior knowledge of embedding the system design to start. Instead, the developers can develop the apps using Android Studio and Android SDK.

The introduction of 5G will open the door for more devices, and data traffic. According to some reports the 5th generation wireless network technology is expected to connect 1.5 billion devices globally in the coming years. It is also stated that the global IoT connections will triple to 25 billion by 2025, while IoT revenue globally will quadruple to $1.1 trillion.

With that said, IoT will focus on developing smart parking lots, street lights, and traffic controls apart from advancing the hospitality and industrial sectors.

7.  APM & EMM

APM (Application Performance Management) and EMM (Enterprise Mobile Management) are two primary elements of mobile enterprise development. These technologies are primarily used to reduce mobile apps’ slowness. With the overall rise in mobile application development trends, they have become the quality tester for mobile apps.

With the upcoming trends, APM will reflect the application behaviour, measure statistics for devices and Oss that are used, and screen user performance to figure out which application features are exploited. With the application landscape and business infrastructure moving to cloud, APM will also provide powerful tools to monitor resources utilized by apps, associate the retrieved data with user insights, and adjust performance with business processes.

EMM will incorporate mobile device management, app management, application wrapping and containerization, and a few components of enterprise file synchronization and sharing. 

From the work from home context, EMM has grown many folds and is looking into automation of processes, workflow optimization, easier and smoother communication flow, and exchange of data

8.  Motion Layout

The layout used by the developers to manage the motion and the widget animations in the apps. This tool is a part of the Constraint Layout library and is compatible with Android 4.0. With these libraries, the team can quickly fill up all the gaps between the complex motion handling and layout transitions, as these tools are known to offer high-end and useful features. 

Developers will be seen using Motion Layout to create multiple interfaces that use the animations, helping them understand what is going on with the app. 

9.  Beacon Technology

Businesses have slowly started to immensely use Beacon technology, as it helps businesses target potential clients uniquely. Beacons are the transmitting gadgets that get connected with mobile devices, in that particular range. The technology allows the companies to send various notifications regarding the special offers, nearby hotels etc.

Beacon technology transformation from a push marketing strategy to an opt-in strategy is useful for many industries. The technology can be applied on-cloud and at-area, which is helping it to gain traction and promote its growth in the coming years.

Beacon-based notifications are helping out businesses to connect with their users in a highly contextual manner. The beacon technology trend in 2021 will see the coming of beacon enabled airports and mobile payment using beacon.

Some companies are predicting the rapid development and use of iBeacon and other similar gadgets for marketing.

10.  Android Enterprise

Digital transformation is now the need of the hour in 2021 for enterprises. The Google-led initiative – Android enterprise helps the workers to use the Android apps in their workplace. The Android Enterprise program helps the developers with the APIs and various other tools needed to integrate support for Android into the solutions of enterprise mobility management.

Wrapping Up

Each year comes with newer innovations and ideas, and these trends keep on rolling back and forth. Looking at the above latest trends in android app development, we can undoubtedly claim that the Android Operating System is growing at a rapid speed towards providing the users a seamless experience.

Given the trends for mobile app development, businesses are opting for app development and are looking for an estimate of the cost.

If you want to grow your business with the advancing technology through android apps, then you can place your requirements or contact us at [email protected].

The post What Are the Top 10 Android App Development Trends? appeared first on Appinventiv.

When I first heard about this new upload format known as the App Bundle, I was very excited! Many of the issues that we developers faced like building APKs to target different API versions, device types, and so on- are now passed on Google Play. 

From this day on, developers will be able to use Dynamic Delivery for creating optimized APKs that satisfies the requirements of user’s devices and delivers them at the runtime for installation.

All this is being done through the Android app bundle app distribution format. Let us dive into what Android’s new, official publishing format is all about.

What is Android App Bundle?

Android launched a new official publishing format called android app bundles (.aab) and it offers a more efficient way to build and release your app. It also lets you easily deliver a great user experience in a small-sized app, this in turn also improves install success rate and reduces uninstallation rates.

Android App Bundles are Google recommended way for building, publishing, and distributing the application across different device configurations. 

Did you know that the android app bundle has become the gold standard for publishing on Google Play? Over 600,000 apps and games currently use the app bundle in production, representing over 40% of all releases on Google Play including Netflix.

Let’s look into the benefits of app bundles now.

Benefits Of Using Google Android App Bundle

1.  Size Reduction

App bundles help in reducing a significant amount of application size! On average, developers have witnessed a 20% size savings compared to APK. You can visit the new app size report in the google play console to see how much your app could save.

Did you know that, with the help of app bundle development, Adobe reduced the size of Adobe Acrobat Reader by 20%? Not only this, but some of these size savings by early adopters of app bundles show some jaw-dropping results. These results are what make Android app bundles a great way to build Android Go apps:

2.  Increased app installations and decreased uninstallations

Apps increasing size would not matter much if we had unlimited storage in our devices. But, as we know, it’s not the case. As the size of an app increases the number of installations decrease!

As a ripple effect of size savings with the help of xamarin android app bundle will increase the app installations. This also resulted in the increase of update rates, and very fewer uninstallations. 

 3.  Higher efficiency

App bundle development in android allows you to build one artifact that includes all of your app’s collected code, resources, and native libraries. So, you are no longer required to build, sign, upload, and manage version codes for multiple APKs. Hence, the efficiency is increased if you install an android app bundle on your device.

4.  Faster downloads

Your app can be efficiently tailored to each device by Google Play which means the process of downloading and installing the app becomes faster.

5.  Integrated codes

With the help of the android studio app bundle, you can prepare for the 64-bit requirement without increasing the size of your app. As a result, Play will deliver the appropriate native code required for each device. 

6.  Increased engineering velocity

The entire process of creating an app is accelerated. From building dynamic and independent modules to designing, testing, and releasing it. The engineering velocity gets a major boost with the android app bundle unity. 

For example, The Book My Show app declared that their app builds time (for a completely new build, without any caching) went down by 70% — this is because, with app bundles, it just dumps every resource into the bundle, rather than segregating them, like for APKs.

7.  Reduced manual effort

During android app development several manual efforts can be completely automated. Once the development is done, its link is uploaded and shared on a specific Slack channel automatically. No manual intervention is required.

8.  Dynamic delivery enabled

App bundles have introduced us to a new concept known as dynamic delivery. One can deliver conditional features at the time of installation on the basis of properties like device features (e.g., AR/VR), user’s country, or device’s version. Users are also given the facility to install features on an on-demand mode instead of the install time. They can even uninstall the features they no longer need. 

This will help the users personalize their experience as per their requirements. This will also come in handy when you do not want to increase the size of your app in the long term. Further allowing us to make the initial size of our application smaller and then offering extra features only to the users who might actually make use of them.

How To Build and Deploy Android App Bundles?

Unlike APKs, app bundles are a publishing format that entails all of your app’s codes. So, it cannot be deployed directly to a device. With the help of the android studio, creating a project as a signed app bundle is just a few clicks away! 

To build app bundles, follow these steps:

Step-1: Start with downloading Android Studio 3.2 or higher. It is the simplest way to build app bundles.

Step-2: Add support for Play Feature Delivery by including a base module, organizing code and resources for configuration APKs, and, optionally, adding feature modules.

Step-3: Now, start building an Android App Bundle using Android Studio. You can even deploy the application onto a connected device from the app bundle through modification of your debug/run configuration and selection of the ‘deploy APK from app bundle’ option. 

Step-4: Testing and publishing your app bundle will be the final step.

Test Your App Bundle

Once you create the android app bundle, you should test how Google Play will use it to generate APKs and how those APKs will behave when deployed to a device. You can use the following methods to test the same:

• Test your app bundle locally by using the bundle tool. It will generate APKs from your app bundle and deploy them to a connected device.
• Share your app with a URL. It is the speediest way of uploading your app bundle and sharing your app as a Google Play Store link with your testers. 
• Set up an open, closed, or internal test. This is another way of testing custom delivery options, like downloading app features on demand.

Final Words

The future has a lot in store for all of us and it is up to us to keep up with it! Without any doubt, I can tell you that the android app bundles are where the future lies. Being an android app development company, we can help you stay ahead in the game.

The post 8 Reasons Why Businesses Should Use Android App Bundles appeared first on Appinventiv.