Earlier today, Kony Solutions Inc. announced the results of its annual survey of global enterprises. When it came to mobile developers, however, one key point ran crystal clear throughout the proceedings: the top point of concern in terms of mobile development is the user experience.
The "State of Mobile Apps" survey, released as part of a larger study involving efforts from MGI Research, comprised of responses from over 200 parties, provided a great deal of information about the mobile industry as a whole. Not only does developing the user experience top the list for most mobile app developers, with 87 percent of respondents out to boost customer engagement, many are coming to view mobile apps as a way to make their business stand out amongst the crowds of competitors in their market space. Topping the list in terms of technical concerns, meanwhile, are providing support for open standards, and allowing for multi-platform development, particularly in the area of hybrid apps. Seventy-two percent are looking for better application performance, 67 percent want multi-platform capability from a single code base, and managing BYOD principles came in next at 46 percent. Comparatively, only 26 percent of companies were looking to increase their use of HTML5, which actually is in line with some earlier reports suggesting that HTML was indeed the future of app coding, but is still in its infancy as a language, making widespread use still a forthcoming matter.
Moreover, fully 48 percent of respondents in the survey showed that they planned to increase the budgets for multi-platform development tools in the next year, with applications geared toward the increasingly mobile workforce being a top priority in development. Currently, however, the largest portion of development is going to customer service apps, with 55 percent of respondents working on one. But 59 percent responded that they were currently working on hybrid apps, and the number was expected to rise to 71 percent within the next year.
It's not too surprising that companies are looking more closely at the user experience. With more and more apps arriving on the market every day, looking at the old measures like time-to-market simply just doesn't cut it anymore. Making an app that more users can work with, and doing so in a fashion that makes them happy to work with it, are aspects of the app experience that are important to users. Thus, the user experience is increasingly important to companies as well, who want to be producing the apps that users are actually using in the first place. An app with a better user experience also gets better ratings, better word-of-mouth promotion among users, and overall, a better way to distinguish one app provider from another.
So seeing that companies are looking to boost their user experience, make their apps available across more platforms, and focus development on the mobile workforce suggests that app developers are taking customer needs to heart, and that's certainly a step in the right direction for consumers.
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Edited by Brooke Neuman
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