Top 10 Challenges in Mobile Application

The mobile app market is growing every day. As per Statista, there were 140.7 billion app downloads worldwide back in 2016, and in 2020 that number was already 218 billion. Corporations, which are developing mobile apps, are doing their best to be up-to-date with the tech and content to stay relevant. However, app development challenges are not rare and with a growing number of mobile users and the variety of devices being launched to the market.

Mobile app development challenges arise from the start of the creating practice as you should generate a unique idea for an application not to fail on the market. Each next step brings more challenges. We will take a look at the most common challenges in mobile application development for you to be prepared and ready to be in control of them.

According to Statista, over 3.48 million applications are available to download in Google Play and around 2.22 million apps in AppStore back in 2019. These numbers keep growing every year and create real challenges in mobile app development. It’s extremely critical to validate and evaluate the customers’ needs for your app, not to be lost in the sea of other similar products.

To make this practice easier, look at these questions:

• What are the point of your application and the main purpose it serves?;
• What makes your application unique, and how can you stand out among competitors?;
• What are the special features of your app, and what useful abilities should it have?;
• Is your application easy to create and launch on different platforms?;
• Is your app easy to navigate?;
• What would be the price of your app?

What about application development challenges? One of the main goals is defining your target audience and studying the strategy of competitors. As we have mentioned before, there are around 2-3 million applications in each of the biggest app stores for each mobile platform. Thus, it’s easy to get your product lost in this amount of competitors.

To stand out among other similar apps, you should conduct deep research to define your target audience. What technology will make your app the most efficient one, which design solutions make your product the most desirable? If your application has no direct competitors, you still should figure out what would make your app relevant for the longest time possible.

Having an amazing app plan won’t make your product profitable if you are not using your powers for their intended purpose. It can be one of the most difficult mobile app development challenges on your way to success. It’s critical to keep a balance between your expenses and the profit. According to Upwork, hiring a mobile app specialist can cost between $18-100 per hour, and the amount of work and money you spend may depend on the project difficulty. 

To find the start capital for your project, you might consider cooperating with investors or starting crowdfunding. However, you need to think beforehand about how your app will make revenue, whether it will be paid directly in the store or have advertisement integrations.

One of the important challenges in mobile application development is choosing a really productive tech. It will mostly affect your team as they decide whether the type of app they will create.

Get the advantages and disadvantages of each tech before you choose the best option. The wrong technology may result in bad app productivity on different platforms, over-expenditure, or lack of user experience. And all of these can cause money and time loss, and you don’t want to have such troubles, right?

Another kind of real challenges in mobile app development is dealing with app performance on different devices and platforms. According to Statista, there are 4.3 billion mobile internet users, and the mobile application market is now relevant more than ever. A variety of mobile devices with different performance and different screen sizes are available now. So, it’s important to cater to all types of device users. Whether Android, iOS or others, each mobile platform tries to update its systems regularly to keep up with the changing technologies. Mobile app developers should upgrade their products to ensure smooth performance on each platform with all the variants. Your app has also looked well on different monitors, so do not forget to consider various mobile devices while working on your app.

The mobile market still proposes a great variety of devices working on different platforms. A major part of the users is divided between Android, iOS, and Windows devices. It would be a mistake to ignore a great part of the audience. Each mobile system has its parameters, UI patterns, and other objects. You should keep everything in mind while creating a cross-platform mobile app.

It would also be desirable to launch your application on every platform simultaneously, as the application might lose its relevance to the audience that can use it. At the same time, the other part of users won’t be interested in your product at the moment of launch on the other platform. For example, the Clubhouse app released for iOS only had already lost the audience’s interest in launching it on Android devices. Statista notes that in February its popularity peakedви with 9 million monthly downloads. Nevertheless, by the day of the Android launch, it had only around 2.7 million downloads.

Security of users’ data might be one of the critical mobile app development challenges nowadays. Internet users are already concerned about websites collecting and selling their data, so you can’t allow any data breach in your app security.

While Apple provides developers with strict guidelines on protecting the data, Google doesn’t have any defined algorithms for Android apps. 

With all the application development challenges presented, it’s still crucial to make sure your application is safe to use and not vulnerable to malware problems.

The productivity of your app on different devices can be one of the other mobile app development challenges you can meet during the realization of your project. Some apps might discharge your device quickly while making it dangerously hot.

It is the main point to consider while working on your app creation. Most users will refuse to continue using an app if there’s a risk of damaging their phone or making it lose its charge quickly. Make sure your app runs smoothly on different devices without consuming a lot of the phone’s power. That will be a key to your success.

What is the point of having a perfectly working app with an appealing design and unique idea if nobody knows about it? That’s why the promotion of your app matters. 

Here are the main application development challenges and goals you can meet:

• Application discovery: the way users can find your app organically;
• Users acquisition: what is the best way for the user to find your app and install it?;
• Customer retention: how to retain app users invested in using your product;
• Application monetization: what is the best way to profit from your application. In-app purchases, premium subscriptions, or fees the user pays to install your app?

Direct or shared control of the app distribution is not available. It can be a real challenge in mobile app development. To get the software, multiple approvals from the carrier are required. For pre-loaded applications, carrier distribution control is needed. 

After that process, developers are forced to make sure their applications work seamlessly and smoothly on the many hardware configurations and software platforms.

With the constant creation of newer technologies, new challenges in mobile application development can appear. Mobile application developers are facing new problems. But with new developing technologies, more possibilities are becoming a reality. There are more abilities to create a perfect app, with thousands of new functions and options to work on as many devices as possible.

All the mobile app development challenges can be overcome if you are truly motivated to bring unique and quality products to the market. We at DataXDev are ready to help you on your way to success.