We are drowned in apps! There’s an app for everything. One for managing your social life, one for sharing your pics, one for editing your pics, one for listening to songs, one for backing up your data, one for keeping in touch with your friends, the list is endless.
According to Statista, Android users were able to choose between 2.8 million apps, while Apple’s App store remained the second-largest app store with 2.2 million available apps!
Let me throw some more facts at you from Business of Apps:
• The average smartphone owner spends 2.8 hours per day interacting with apps
• 8 out of 10 users use a maximum of 3 apps on a daily basis
• The app category that users engage with most frequently is social networking
However, this rapid growth of mobile apps has made it difficult for mobile app developers to seek consumer attention. With time, the number of features in an app have also increased. This has made apps bulkier.
This has also resulted in large-sized apps. Way back in 2013, Apple increased its over-air download limit to 100 megabytes—any apps bigger than that can only be downloaded when the device is connected to Wi-Fi.
However, this new trend of creating bulkier apps has been proven to be the next big issue for mobile app developers.
This transition of consumer behaviour taught mobile app developer a lesson that: simple is better.
Doing one thing — and doing it well, quickly and in a contained environment — is actually the reason for another up-and-coming tech trend: micro apps.
Let’s have a look and see what micro apps are and why mobile app development is going for micro.
What are micro apps?
Micro app is a fancy word for mobile applications which are actually a feature of a larger app.
Technically,
A micro app is an HTML-based, custom application, which is developed to support a small number of function. In simple word, a micro app is an application you build to perform a specific function.
For instance, Facebook Messenger. It is nothing but the chat feature of Facebook web app. These apps have a single functionality, allowing users to solve a precise problem without having to navigate through a large and complex app.
Additionally, micro app concept holds enormous importance for enterprise mobility strategies. In an enterprise, a micro app is a stand-alone app that focuses on a targeted set of application functionalities.
Now that you understand what micro apps are, it’s time to see why mobile app developer is going for micro apps.
But why do we need micro apps at all?
1. Mobile apps fail to provide proper user experience
Most of the apps fail or are rejected because of its poor user experience. The user would uninstall the app in no time if he/ she struggle to perform a basic function of the app.
Users are in hurry. They need an app which performs only one specific task. And this is where “big-and-larger” mobile apps fail.
Some other examples of poor user experience include:
• App performance issues (slow or lagging)
• Long load times
• Long registration processes
• Difficult to access features
Micro apps, on the other hand, provide a good user experience, and a user can easily access what they are looking for. They are simple, without a lot of features to learn, they allow the user to quickly perform a specific action in few steps as possible.
2. Soaring development prices cause many apps to be abandoned in production
When creating mobile apps, companies often exceed their app development budget. Consequently, most of the apps never reached app store.
More than half of businesses pay upwards of $50,000, on average, for a single app, while roughly a quarter spend more than $100,000.
Micro apps, on the other hand, are much faster and easier to build. With the help of micro service architecture, you can quickly create and deploy apps that cost far less than the production cost of the company budget you have set.
The idea behind micro service architecture is to improve the overall product, not just the project at hand.
In a micro-services architecture, each service runs a unique process and usually manages its own database.
This not only provides development teams with a more decentralized approach to building software, it also allows each service to be deployed, rebuilt, redeployed and managed independently. This helps in reducing the overall app development cost.
3. Mobile apps fail to switch on all device
Modern workforce is dynamic, flexible, and constantly on the go. A user might use a smartphone one minute and a laptop the next.
One of the benefits of micro apps is that they run on all devices, including both mobile and desktop. They can even be delivered through a browser, email account, or pushed to a messenger app such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, or IBM Watson Workspace.
With micro apps, information reaches users no matter where they are or what channel they are using.
Final Note: –
If you look at the above-mentioned issues, you might realize why mobile app development is going micro?
Micro apps allow a developer to quickly and easily build highly targeted apps that give users task-based functionality and quick access to the important information they need.
Want to provide the type of features users find indispensable then this is the latest mobile app development trend that you should look after.
If you have any questions or queries or need more guidance on the subject, please message us in the comments below or feel free to contact us.
