iOS Development Trends That Will Dominate in 2023
For over a decade, Apple Inc. has been holding one of the largest shares in the mobile application development market, second only to Android. Therefore, many businesses don’t miss out on the opportunity to strategically expand their audience reach and build their mobile apps based on iOS.
Meanwhile, the iOS platform strives to satisfy the expectations of its followers and constantly upgrades by providing new app features and enhancing its security. This way, the companies that build their mobile solutions for iOS should always follow the emerging trends and timely implement them to remain competitive in the market and better address their customer needs.
Staying on top of the iOS app development trends will be equally important in 2023. We’ve prepared a small guide on the latest iOS development features and technologies that will be relevant in the upcoming year.
Top iOS App Development Trends for 2023
Apple utilizes a wide range of technologies to make iOS mobile applications performant, engaging, and user-friendly. Here are some of the major enhancements that will be on the rise in iOS mobile application development in 2023.
Internet of Things and Homekit
IoT is an inevitable concept of modern life. Many households today have various appliances connected into one ecosystem. These devices exchange data with each other and create comfortable environments that are worth living in. Remote control of household appliances, easy access to house devices through mobile apps, automated systems diagnostics – all this becomes available due to the innovations introduced by the Internet of Things.
Apart from creating Smart Home technologies for mass distribution, IoT developers also focus on healthtech and safety issues. They attempt to improve virtual healthcare devices and minimize the possibility of the Covid-19 scenario repetition or at least make it less harmful.
According to Statista, in 2020 there were 11.7 bln devices connected to IoT. By 2025, this number is predicted to reach 30.9 bln. Such an impressive increase makes iOS app developers work more on applications that will be compatible with the new advanced technologies of IoT.
For building diverse IoT apps, Apple provides iOS mobile app developers with a special framework called HomeKit. This software framework unites diverse IoT devices under one Apple umbrella, allowing developers to create complex IoT solutions combined with Siri and running on various operating systems from iOS to iPadOS, to macOS, and others.
With the rapid development of 5G mobile internet and cloud technologies, it’s expected that IoT will be only growing in its popularity in the near future. Therefore, companies should already consider the possibility of utilizing IoT technology in their iOS mobile solutions.
Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence
The implementation of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) helps to create more customer-engaging, robust, and efficient apps.
iOS app developers are working with ML through the Core ML framework. This tool can be integrated into the app to initiate machine training and make further predictions in order to enhance the customer experience. Core ML can perform many tasks through a variety of algorithms, thus different businesses can choose what fits better to their demands. Some of the AI features used in mobile apps are: face and speech recognition, text or image classification, and many others.
AI implementation is an iOS app development trend that will continue to be relevant in the coming years since it plays a significant role in the user experience and makes app development more efficient and time-effective.
Wearable Apps
“Wearables” is one of the greatest buzzwords nowadays. Wearable apps are designed for such devices as smartwatches, fitness bands, trackers, and other gadgets that have become popular for their ability to show heartbeat, oxygen rate, blood pressure, or the number of steps done during the day.
However, modern wearable apps go much further. Apple Watch 5, for example, can make electrocardiograms or identify a panic condition by measuring the pulse. What is more, in 2019 Apple made an announcement about Apple Watch 6 integration with Apple App Store. Thus, the number of iOS apps developed for the Apple smartwatch will increase, offering users new features and abilities.
In addition to already common smartwatches and fitness bands, much attention is given to smart rings that have received some surprising features such as car locking or a panic button.
Wearable applications are the trend in iOS development not only for daily use devices but also for more serious spheres such as healthcare, especially in the post-pandemic period. Wearable device producers working in cooperation with wearable app developers can open new potential of IoT and make our everyday life much easier.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
AR and VR are one of the most impressive trends in iOS app development. They unite the real and digital world helping to perceive information in different ways. At first, people were captured by the entertaining features of AR and VR, for example by the popular app “Pokemon Go”. Now, these technologies are used for many other practical purposes such as information search, shopping, self-improvement, and others.
L’Oreal uses AR to increase sales by offering customers to try on different hairstyles with their app “Style My Hair”. Google has implemented Augmented Reality in its Google Maps using the “True View”. It allows finding out where exactly the person is by using the device camera pointed at the nearest buildings.
Specialists expect that in 2023 both AR and VR technologies will be integrated more into iOS mobile apps and will enhance customer engagement and user experience.
Mobile Wallets
E-commerce plays a significant role in the modern economy. According to Statista, in 2022 user penetration in e-commerce is expected to reach 54.1%% and is supposed to grow to 66.2%% by 2027.
These stats also means that people start to rely on traditional payment methods less often and use their mobile phones or smart watches for financial operations. The trend has long gone beyond online payments only and is also actively used in brick-and-mortar facilities. iOS developers, in turn, have been trying to make these processes more comfortable and secure. Apple Pay is one of the successful examples. It helps users manage their payments more efficiently and within a minimal time.
In 2023, mobile wallets should be given particular attention as there is still a large number of applications that don’t support mobile wallet features. Meanwhile, the digital wallet transaction value is growing year by year and will reach 60% by 2026. Therefore, those businesses that miss out on the opportunity to include digital wallet transactions in their mobile apps are at risk of falling behind the market competition.
Cloud Storage Apps
The importance of Clouds has grown significantly over the past several years as well as a variety of their services from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to serverless computing. Apple closely follows all the innovations in the software development sphere so there is no surprise that cloud-based iOS apps have started being utilized since 2011. In 2022, the popularity of iOS cloud-based apps has risen remarkably and in 2023, it’ll continue to be one of the major iOS app development trends.
Empowered with CloudKit, iOS developers can create mobile applications that are able to store and manage large data heaps over the Apple device ecosystem without relying on a particular device storage capacity. Apart from that, cloud-based applications are much simpler to scale, faster to develop, and have increased security. iCloud greatly boosts app performance, therefore, more and more businesses consider adding cloud solutions to their iOS-based mobile applications.
Voice Assistants
At their first appearance, Artificial Intelligence-driven voice assistants created a real sensation. Many major companies invested in the development of their own conversational bots and Apple created its Siri. Since then Siri has only been developing and getting smarter. Today, Siri is used to help people with everyday tasks. Companies embed Siri in their digital solutions to help their customers quickly find the needed products via voice search or resolve any issues, providing digital customer support.
It’s easy to integrate Siri into any iOS-based mobile application as Apple provides iOS developers with a special SiriKit. The Kit is used to integrate the voice assistant into the iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS apps.
Another feature that has been recently added to Siri is Siri Shortcut. The feature allows creating shortcuts to perform quick actions in an iOS app. This way, app users can quickly utilize a particular app without even reaching their mobile devices.
In 2020, there were 660 mln of people who use Siri on their iPhones daily and it’s expected that 84.2 mln of people will use Siri by 2024.
iBeacon
Beacon technology has been successfully implemented by many companies for more than a decade already. These small and simple Bluetooth gadgets allow customers to easily and fast explore their surroundings and find out more about new products and brands. Meanwhile, businesses use Beacons to learn more about their customers and their purchasing behavior.
Many tech giants use Beacons and Apple isn’t an exception. It first introduced the iBeacon technology in its iOS7, providing its users with additional context on the products advertised by various businesses with the help of iBeacons. Today, more and more companies equip their brick-and-mortar facilities with iBeacons. Verified Market Research states that the Bluetooth Beacon and iBeacon Market size, which was estimated at $696.05 mln in 2019, will reach $109532.21 mln by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 87.74% in the forecasted period.
Security
Mobile security threads are a present issue for Apple. And although iOS less often becomes a mobile malware target in comparison to Android, Apple owners take the possibility of security breaches seriously. For example, the closed nature of the iOS operating system makes it more secure and tight control over the apps published in the app store and minimizes the possibility of threats.
Apart from that, the company develops various kits and frameworks to prevent and combat the issue of data leaks and security breaches. These are the frameworks that have built-in user privacy and app security at their core, including HomeKit, CloudKit, SiriKit, DriverKit, ReplayKit, and ARKit. Moreover, recently Apple presented a new networking feature App Transport Security (ATS) which is aimed at establishing a higher level of security across various iOS applications, their extensions, and web services.
Conclusion
Mobile app development sphere is constantly innovating, making the competition more fierce in the market. Therefore, to hold their customer attention high, companies should ensure that their mobile applications are user-friendly, fast-performing, robust, and comply with the latest mobile development trends. This doesn’t imply that they should use every trend in their digital solutions, but it’s important to identify which can serve better for a particular business purpose.
When it comes to enhancing iOS applications with the latest technologies, apart from their relevance, companies have to also consider the complexity of implementation. Some innovations will require an entire team of iOS developers who provide professional iOS app development services and can successfully bring the planned changes to life. SCAND is ready to provide you with experienced iOS development teams who can implement any of the recent iOS innovations in your mobile app and make it relevant in 2023.
