Mobile Market Insights Don’t Lie: Mobile Is Stayin’ Alive.

There’s an ongoing debate on whether the era of mobile apps has come to its end. Some say users are no longer willing to download new apps or open their old ones. This is nonsense.

As we learned in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic proved the opposite to be true. In fact, the latest mobile market insights demonstrate that the pandemic sped up the transition to a mobile-first world, advancing it by 2 or 3 years in just 12 months.

Consumers are now actively looking for new mobile offerings to cater for their needs to shop, do business, manage their personal finances, improve their health and be entertained.

Data source: State of Mobile 2021, App Annie (2021)

Qvik has been developing mobile applications since 2008, and we have seen the development of the mobile market from the appearance of the first applications in the app stores. Today, we see that the era of mobile apps is nothing but over.

In this blog post, we dig a little deeper and look at what customers are looking for and what every company should know about their changing expectations. What industries are we expecting to bloom in the mobile-first world in the coming years? Who will be the winners in the Mobile-First World?

Consumers know what they want, and it’s 4 stars or more

Speeding towards the mobile-first world does not mean customers are ready to adopt just any new digital service. Studies show that users’ expectations towards digital services are higher than ever.

Today, customers expect the same user experience from their banking app than from the coolest new social media or food delivery app. This means that, in the mobile market, you’re not competing just against other companies in your own field. The experience provided by your app is in fact being measured against every single app consumers are using.

And this is when your app rating and reviews become more important than you think. In a recent study by Apptentive, consumers were clear: the lower the star rating, the less likely they’d be to download the app in the first place.

Source: Screenshot from Apptentive’s Mobile App Ratings and Reviews: Where to Start and How to Win guide.

When your company has made a strategic decision to invest in developing a mobile app, you don’t want to ruin the returns with something as simple as bad reviews.

But if you are in this situation right now, don’t worry. There are plenty of ways to improve your ratings – and we at Qvik are here to help your mobile business bloom.

What kind of apps are trending now?

In addition to highlighting the growth of user expectations, it is also interesting to see which sectors have been the winners of the pandemic – and who are going to be the winners in the mobile-first era.

If we count out games and social media, we can see significant growth in four industries in particular: business, finance, retail and health & fitness apps.

Data source: State of Mobile 2021, App Annie (2021)

In our line of business, though, it’s not only important to know what the current state of mobile is, but also what lies ahead.

What do we expect to see in the future?

In the Nordic market, there are very few B2C industries that we expect not to see strong growth in mobile: the mobile market is still far from mature and we expect to see plenty of new mobile success stories in various industries.

The question is: What factors and progressions should businesses take into consideration when planning their mobile strategies?

At Qvik, we forecast three clear future trends. First of all, the mobile device is becoming an even more important tool in our everyday lives: your phone is practically a remote control for everything around you. You can use it to control your home electronics or your car, or for getting physical access to services.

“This is a trend that has huge potential, and we only expect to see more of these solutions hit the market”, says Qvik’s CEO Lari Tuominen.

Another thing we see is that mobile will have an even more important role in commerce.

“In addition to the growth we’re seeing in retail apps, mobile will have an even more important part to play in all future transactions. The growing number of digital payment methods and the phone’s bigger role in confirming transactions will accelerate this development”, Tuominen continues.

The third thing we predict is that the division between web and mobile will become even more blurred.

“I’m certain we’ll see more brilliant PWA and other hybrid solutions that provide users with more seamless digital experiences”, Tuominen concludes.

Building mobile success stories and navigating your business in the middle of emerging technologies and growing user expectations isn’t the easiest job to do. And that’s why we are here. Our job is to keep our customers up to date about trends and the development of mobile technologies.

Don’t hesitate to contact us whether it’s about understanding user expectations, hacking your app ratings or building entirely new mobile offerings.