Your regular digest of “What’s New in App Development” gathered and collected by the 10Fold Enterprise, Mobility & Telecom Practice Team.
Big items to consider: WhatsApp, a popular messaging app, recently announced app updates and mobile platform changes as it celebrates its 7th anniversary. Apple may also be getting us closer to making the term, ‘Anybody can code,’ a reality, with its Apple Swift programming language. Finally, a recent survey by InMobi focuses on the mobile app ecosystem to examine the most popular apps – and where the app money truly lies.
WhatsApp to only support phones with the latest mobile platforms by 2017; Bad news for Blackberry, Nokia? – Lawyer Herald
Big changes are coming to WhatsApp, the popular messaging app. WhatsApp Inc. recently announced that in order to improve its mobile messaging app’s speed, reliability, and security, it will only support phones with the latest mobile platforms. This move might affect users of Blackberry and Nokia devices, which do not run iOS or Android platforms. WhatsApp has also finally decided to get rid of its $1 annual subscription fee to attract more users. The company continues to grow as it celebrates its 7th founding anniversary (WhatsApp was introduced in 2009). Today, WhatsApp has an estimated one billion monthly active users worldwide.
Apple Swift language gains traction among mobile app developers – Tech Target
Apple’s latest programming language, Swift, is becoming more popular among developers — largely due to its ease of use. It has ability to analyzes the code and detect any mistakes, and “ready to use” SDK frameworks.
Swift’s biggest benefit is that it makes it simpler to write apps. It requires less text to code a given command. Plus, using the Swift Playgrounds feature in XCode, Apple’s suite for building apps, developers can get a real-time preview of the app. To help avoid common coding errors, Swift programmers can enter an evaluation command that analyzes the code and detects any mistakes — a feature Objective-C lacks. These new developments will definitely help app developers save precious time, though it does leave us with one important question: what will happen to custom app developers? Only time will tell.
It’s the end of “euphoric times” for custom app developers – Tech Crunch
For the first time in about eight years, we saw a decline in the small business customer base of app developers (in terms of revenue and per-project value). The primary reason cited is the rise of white labels and SDKs. “Uber for X” toolkits have indeed become a force to reckon with. Small businesses increasingly rely on “ready to use” frameworks rather than opting for custom development.
Research: Insights on the State of App Developers 2016 – Developer Tech
The mobile revolution and the surge in smartphone usage is driving the market for mobile applications while mobile app development is a prospering industry which continues to expand. The growth in consumer demand for mobile apps and the increase in time spent on the apps is encouraging for both aspiring and seasoned developers to innovate across mobile devices.
InMobi surveyed mobile developers across the world to better understand the ever-growing ecosystem. These insights were drawn from over 1,000+ respondents across 155 countries on the latest trends in the mobile app ecosystem, including developer mindshare, platform of choice, revenue models, challenges and motivations, and mobile ad network preferences. The survey found that Android is by far the most popular platform among developers (86%), followed by Apple iOS (57%). However, when it comes to making money, Windows Phone apps developers seem to earn the highest per month, per app, when compared to iOS and Android developers.