Mobile App Development Time, Cost, Features, and Market Growth

Developing a mobile app is a great way to interact with your customers or end-users and deliver engaging user experiences across multiple platforms. It would be an understatement to say that having a website is sufficient for adequately running a business. As a matter of fact, a majority of businesses in various industries have at least one functional website. However, despite having a strong web presence, many businesses lack a mobile app that is upto the required standards. That being said, developing a user-centric mobile app can give you an edge over your competitors that are yet to adopt mobile app development services. 

According to a joint survey conducted by Oracle and MobileSmith, more than 60% users prefer mobile apps over e-commerce websites for making online purchases. It is, therefore, quite evident that mobile app development can unlock new business opportunities and generate revenue streams for profitable returns. 

This blog post provides a high-level overview of the services offered by a mobile app development company with a focus on cost, time, and features. 

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Mobile App Development Features

A mobile application can have all types of features, depending on its use, target audience, and value proposition. You can integrate an app with next-gen technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, blockchain, AR/VR.  You can use various plugins, third-party services, or develop and introduce custom features from scratch. Given below are the key features of a mobile application. 

Personalized Content

Delivering personalized user experiences is a tried and tested technique for driving user engagement and interactivity. A mobile application provides the best means for personalization based on users’ likes, preferences, and previous app activities. 

Offline Usage

Unlike websites and hybrid applications, a mobile application can be designed to function offline with minimal lag or inefficacies. Besides, there are several apps that can operate both offline and online. Using these apps, you can save various files and documents for offline usage and access them anytime, regardless of the internet connection. 

Utilizing Device Features

A mobile app can use device features like bluetooth, camera, GPS, and NFC to enable users to conveniently perform various actions. For instance, there are many applications that let you scan QR codes using the device camera. Similarly, apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps use GPS to identify a device's location at any given interval. 

Easy Integrations

Mobile app development offers vast integration options to improve user experiences and engage users through custom features. You can integrate an app with various third-party services or next-gen technologies to introduce unique features for better user engagement. 

Push Notifications 

Push notification is something you can’t have in a website or web application. Contrarily, a mobile app can send push notification to users about various offers, deals, and upcoming events. This feature is increasingly beneficial for various businesses operating in different niches like retail, F&B, travel, hospitality, and more.

Mobile App Development Cost

The cost depends on what kind of app you are going to develop. It’s difficult to predict the exact cost for a mobile app. However, you can always make a cost estimation based on the features and functionalities that you’re going to implement. 

Hiring an in-house team of developers can be expensive and time consuming, not to mention the hardware and maintenance costs. Hiring freelancers or indie developers is one way to mitigate project costs but it still isn’t the ideal approach. While hiring freelancers, sometimes you may have to compromise with the quality of work as it may not always be up to the mark. Besides, a freelancer can have multiple projects running in parallel and you can’t always have the complete transparency that is required. Therefore, the best approach is to hire a freelancer or avail services from a mobile app development company. 

The western and European countries normally charge $80 to $200 per hour for developing a simple mobile application. Implementing add-on features may impose additional costs. That being said, outsourcing a mobile app development company from South Asian countries like India can be relatively fast, efficient, and cost-effective. 

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Mobile App Development Time

It’s hard to predict the development time accurately as it depends on many factors. 

• The type of application
• Proposed features and functionalities
• Design sprints and UI/UX efforts required
• Wireframing and prototype generation
• Frontend and backend development
• Number of integrations required
• Quality assurance and testing
• Deployment on app stores

The research, ideation, validation and roadmap creation can take up to two weeks. The UI/UX design processes will take another 2-3 weeks, subject to final approval and validation. 

Then comes the development and testing phase. The development time for a mobile app depends on the number of features and functionalities that you are going to implement. For instance, if it’s a simple application that showcases your business USP along with some basic features, it can be developed within 2-3 weeks. Implementing advanced AI algorithms or immersive AR/VR features can take another 2-3 weeks or more based on the requirements. 

Putting it this way, building a full-fledged business application with cutting-edge technology integrations and powerful features can take upto 5-6 months. But that is again a rough estimation and it may vary depending on the project requirements and expertise available for mobile app development. 

Market Growth and Forecasts

It goes without saying that the mobile app industry is thriving with several apps becoming a part of our day-to-day lives. According to Statistica, mobile apps are expected to generate a whopping $189 billion in revenue globally by the end of 2020. As of today, there are 2.2 million apps on Apple App Store while Google Playstore features 2.8 million apps in different categories. Besides, the average app downloads worldwide are increasing tremendously every year. 

Source: Statistica

In 2018, there was a 15% rise in the number of app downloads as compared to previous year. Seeing the current trends, Statistica predicts a 25% increase in app downloads between 2018 and 2022 

Conclusion

Mobile applications have become ubiquitous and are steadily becoming an essential part of our daily lives. With our 2.7 billion smartphone users worldwide, the mobile app market continues to grow without showing any signs of slowing down. Besides, the technological advancements in various fields have unlocked new opportunities for businesses to boost user engagement through their mobile apps. For instance, e-commerce store owners can introduce augmented reality features to their app to enable shoppers to locate items. Similarly, real-estate companies can provide virtual tours of various properties to their potential clients or prospects through VR-based mobile apps. 

Why Choose Oodles Technologies For Mobile App Development?

We are a 360-degree SaaS app development company that specializes in building cross-platform mobile apps for Android and iOS platforms. Our developers critically analyze your project requirements and formulate effective strategies to build a performance-driven mobile app that is easy to scale. We work on the latest tools and next-gen technologies to build a feature-rich mobile app with custom technology integrations. Our end-to-end mobile app development services include UI/UX design, development, testing, deployment, scaling, and technical maintenance.