The mobile development industry witnessed tremendous innovations and shifts in the year 2023. The implementation of new programming languages and libraries, as well as the introduction of new tools and technologies, results in rapid growth in mobile development. Looking into 2024, the mobile development sector will be influenced by these several trends. Here’s what technologies to focus on, what will be in demand, and what developers need to monitor.
Artificial Intelligence: A Game-Changer in Mobile Development
Artificial Intelligence (AI) remains the most prominent and promising direction in mobile development for 2024. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, AI has the potential to increase company profits by $4.4 trillion annually. As AI continues to revolutionize industries across the board, mobile developers are increasingly incorporating generative AI into everyday applications.
Machine Learning (ML) technologies have already found a strong foothold in mobile development. Libraries for image recognition, text scanning, voice and video processing, and tools for improving app performance, such as those combating memory leaks, are just the beginning. FaceID, for instance, relies heavily on ML to enable secure and seamless authentication.
Since late 2022, there has been an explosion in the development of AI systems, and generative AI technologies like ChatGPT are now at the forefront of this revolution. In the Russian market, Yandex’s Yandex GPT is also making waves. Moving into 2024, companies are increasingly integrating AI-based solutions into their apps. This integration is not limited to improving user experiences through better content recommendations and personalized services but extends to tasks like automatic translation and smart user interaction.
For mobile developers, AI’s role is expanding beyond app functionality to the very development process itself. AI-driven tools are now capable of generating and optimizing code, which could significantly speed up the development cycle. However, questions still remain about the quality and safety of AI-generated code—particularly in terms of security and performance. Despite these concerns, the trend toward AI-enhanced development is undeniable and promises to evolve further in 2024.
Cross-Platform Development: Kotlin Multiplatform and Flutter Take Center Stage
Cross-platform mobile development has been a growing trend for several years, allowing developers to build apps for multiple platforms with a single codebase. In 2024, two solutions are leading the charge: Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) by JetBrains and Flutter by Google. These technologies are not only popular but continue to evolve and improve, making them key players in the cross-platform development space.
Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) is gaining traction as a versatile SDK for developing apps across Android, iOS, and other platforms. With its strong Kotlin ecosystem, KMP allows developers to share code between platforms while maintaining the ability to write platform-specific code where necessary. The result is a streamlined development process that reduces redundancy without sacrificing performance.
Flutter, Google’s open-source UI toolkit, is another heavyweight in the cross-platform development world. Known for its fast development cycle and rich set of pre-designed widgets, Flutter continues to evolve with regular updates that enhance its capabilities, performance, and integration with various platforms. Flutter’s flexibility makes it an appealing choice for developers seeking to create beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase.
Both KMP and Flutter will see further advancements in 2024, with JetBrains conducting an annual survey to gauge the growing popularity of Kotlin and KMP. Expect these tools to introduce new features, optimizations, and capabilities that make cross-platform mobile development even more efficient and powerful.
Source: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2023/kotlin/
In the fall of 2023, something that many developers and fans of KMP technology were waiting for happened. The technology moved to the Stable status and became completely ready for full use. This means that many issues that were relevant for the Alpha and Beta versions of the SDK were resolved. For example, they improved support for Kotlin/Native, work with multithreading, memory, etc. One of the goals of the roadmap for 2024 was to implement direct interaction between the Kotlin and Swift languages. Despite the fact that Google developers are the authors of the competing product Flutter, the company officially places a big bet on KMP. Cross-platform support is included in many solutions. So we advise you to take a closer look at this product.
Another trend related to cross-platform development is the use of Compose Multi Platform to implement a cross-platform UI. This declarative framework combines technologies such as Compose for Desktop, Compose iOS, Compose for Web, and Jetpack Compose for Android, and allows you to quickly and relatively easily create a common UI for different platforms. In 2023, the alpha version of Compose for iOS was released. In 2024, the Beta version is expected to be released, which will include improvements in working with the native iOS UI, as well as support for a cross-platform solution for navigation.
In global trends in mobile development, solutions such as React Native, hybrid development on Cordova and ionic, and Xamarin remain popular. The trend for PWA development also continues.
Native development
Technologies and frameworks change, native development remains. This is the foundation of foundations, the base that every developer should know. Using native languages and tools, as well as the Native First approach, will always be relevant. In addition, for the implementation of projects with complex logic, complex UI, it is worth choosing native development.
Every year, developers of iOS/Android platforms, as well as Swift and Kotlin languages, release many new and interesting solutions, which they talk about at thematic conferences WWDC and Google I/O.
Particular attention should be paid to the growing trend towards declarative development in mobile applications. The SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose frameworks are actively developing, steadily improving, becoming more convenient and reliable in operation. They are increasingly used in the development of applications of varying complexity. Many libraries and ready-made solutions tailored for SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose. We can say that this is a new standard for mobile development for Android and iOS.
It is also worth paying attention to supplementing mobile applications with interactive widgets that will help draw attention to applications and provide instant access to a number of functions.
Virtual reality
In 2023, at the WWDC conference, Apple presented one of the most high-profile new products – Vision Pro virtual reality glasses running on the VisionOS platform. Of course, this is far from the first such device in the world, and similar devices have long been used in the gaming industry. The emphasis is on unique immersive technologies, improved sound and image quality. As part of the creation of the device, large-scale developments were carried out in the field of spatial computing. VisionOS support was included in such tools as: ARKit, RealityKit, Unity, RealityComposer, etc. Both the toolkit and documentation are currently available to all interested developers. The start of sales of the device itself is scheduled for 2024-2025.
Recently, the creators of Vision Pro announced the imminent launch of an app store for virtual reality glasses. This means that in 2024 we will see a boom in various applications for AR/VR devices: games, virtual fitting rooms, interior design applications, immersive movie viewing, listening to music, etc. In addition, according to Statista, by 2028 the number of AR and VR market users in the world will reach 3674.0 million users.
Both Google and Apple are also focusing on improving the immersive user experience on standard smartphones, watches, and tablets.
Not just smartphones. IoT
Every year, new various devices running Android and iOS are released. These are not only smartphones and tablets, but also watches, smart TVs, game consoles, fitness trackers, car computers, and smart home devices. OS development companies are interested not only in supporting new capabilities of devices and gadgets, but also in improving the tools for third-party developers.
The use of NFC, Bluetooth in applications is still relevant. Yahoo Finance predicts growth in the NFC field from 2023 to 2030 by 33.1 billion US dollars.
Security, improved network operation
Preservation of confidential information has been and remains one of the main tasks of developers. This is evidenced by the Gartner forecast. The introduction of enhanced security measures (biometric authentication, use of blockchain, etc.) is very relevant in 2024. Also, special attention should be paid to stable and secure operation of the network, including work with cloud services, with NFC, when connecting to other devices. Modern mobile OS offer a wide range of native tools for implementing and supporting secure operation of applications.
Let’s sum it up
In 2024, mobile platforms, languages and development tools will continue to evolve. The main areas that we recommend paying attention to will be:
- native development;
- cross-platform;
- development for various mobile devices, IoT;
- support and use of Russian technologies;
- security, network operations;
- AR/VR.