There is no denying that the mobile apps have evolved tremendously over the years. Today our life revolves around mobile apps – be it for waking up in the morning, working out, booking a dinner table, navigating to a new place, ordering coffee while on the move (Starbucks), etc. etc. Anything we want, it’s just one tap away.
But this wasn’t the story before two decades when the first Smartphone was launched in the year 1994 and had only over 10 inbuilt apps (Address book, calculator, calendar, etc.) Well, these weren’t really called apps but features and then Nokia upped the game by introducing Java games (remember the snake game?) in their phones. And those Java games were considered apps too.
Well, the game changer of the app as well as the mobile industry would definitely be the Apple’s iPhone that was launched in 2007. It came with inbuilt apps such as Maps, Text, Weather, etc. Then came the App Store and the rest is history. The journey of mobile apps has been nothing but remarkable where before few years they were only a few of them and today they have their own different world. Apps today have become an indispensable part of people’s lives and there is possibly no stoppage on its growth.
Apps on Rise
Well, the demand for apps among the users has led to a rise in the development of the applications. The constant rise in demand for innovative applications has compelled businesses and developers to release apps at the earliest. This sometimes compromises the quality of the application – be it the UI or the UX eventually losing users within the first days of its release. According to a statistics, the number of such users has risen to 80% who uninstalls or deletes apps within the first three days of downloading it.
These stats clearly indicate that people are becoming more and more disappointed with the app experience. In view of such app market situation, the enterprises, as well as the developers, have started to focus on this issue at hand. They are starting to grasp that when it comes to applications “simple – sells” and that they actually need to focus on the few but core functions of the application shifting them towards – Micro Apps.
What Micro-Apps Do
Micro Apps might seem like a foreign word to most of the users out there but you already have been using a micro application in your day to day life. Your “Facebook Messenger”, it is a micro-app which does only one thing i.e. live chat between Facebook users. And this is what would be the exact definition of micro-apps. Their function is only to focus on a specific functionality, attending to a specific problem of the user. Therefore, these save users from dealing with a complex application.
Micro apps are comparatively easy to develop and deploy. They are in HTML and involve easy integration to a mobile platform. They are accessible through a browser. Before micro-apps became prevalent among the normal users, they were in use of managers and employees. These were in use for handling their time sheets and issuing approvals.
However, presently more and more companies are reconsidering to tweak their approach for Mobile App Development so that they can attract and retain their users. And hence, we can say that micro-apps would certainly be a trending thing in the coming years.
How Micro-Apps are Different
See, what really does make the development of micro-apps different from that of the general apps that we use today? The latter ones (the apps that we use today) include number of functionalities. They are nothing but a short version of their websites or desktop apps. They carry out similar activities to that of their larger equivalents.
This has made the mobile apps burdensome and complex which then requires more storage space and resources to run properly. This, in turn, makes the app slow and its navigation complex. It aggrevates the users more when they are unable to find what they are really looking for in an application. This is where micro apps help as these applications are small, task-specific and customer-oriented. These apps enable the users to perform a small number of tasks easily and in a flash.
Advantages of Micro-Apps
Moreover, when it comes to the benefits of going with the micro-apps: (1) be it business or personal apps, micro apps makes the accessibility to core functionality very easy (2) Customized User Interface (according to specific users, device, use case, etc.) (3) Simplifies the testing and the iterating process due to quick user feedbacks (4) agile development.
Hence, micro apps will be the next big thing in the forthcoming years in the domain of app development. And both the users and the business would benefit from it equivalently.
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