I remember my school and college days, when we had to go out for buying anything, doing a banking transaction or hiring a cab which was cumbersome, time consuming, unsafe and many a times not available. Now in the 21^st century, with the advent of a small hand held device called Mobile phone, development of technology and availability of internet, whether it is about shopping, ordering your favourite food, saving money, hiring a cab or any other routine activity online, we can do with just a click on our smart phone through a magical thing known as “Mobile App (Mobile Application)”. So everything has quickly moved from Brick model to Click Model. Our cellular device has emerged as a real friend in need and is playing a crucial role in simplifying our daily tasks and changing our outlook towards information. Apps usage is witnessing exponential growth and the apps have become an integral part of the digital ecosystem.

We can do anything and everything with mobile phone, from booking hotels to flight tickets, a cab, ordering grocery or even social networking, this all is just a click away. Almost every sector including hospitality, education, retail, real estate, advertising, travel and automotive and many more have already started selling their product or services through Mobile Applications as having a mobile App for a business helps the enterprises in both Demographic and Geographic segmentation of the Market.

For tapping on all these users’ activities, enterprises have noticed this transformation and are investing in mobile app development to grab maximum market shares in their respective fields

For example: Banks are increasingly investing on apps, by enabling the mobile web and mobile app channels for online banking, and providing new mobile payment services. Mobile banking apps let customers check their balance, download a statement, make or break a fixed deposit, transfer funds from one account to another instantly, request for a cheque book or statement of account or even interact with their bank manager through video branch.

Similarly Airline companies are offering their passengers a complete chain of services starting from checking the availability of a flight to booking the ticket to desired seat allocation through web check in to cancellation and refund of amount through Mobile Apps. There are endless examples which can be given here.

Why Mobile Applications are becoming successful day by day

More and more people are using Mobile Apps nowadays because of following reasons

• Availability of good handset devices at a reasonable cost.

• Availability of internet at a very low cost

• Apps are user friendly for all age groups

• Awareness about the apps by different service providers and manufacturers in their advertisements.

• Most enterprises have started realizing that the users of their product or services have shifted from traditional style of purchasing to mobile apps because of their busy schedule, convenience and usage of internet. Enterprises are investing heavily in app development to exploit the potential.

• Apps will be a big contributor to the latest initiative of Indian Govt. to make India a Cashless Economy.

Mobile Apps are now a necessity for Business Houses and not a choice:

Mobile technology has changed the way businesses interact with end-users, whether the end-user is a customer, employee, business partner, or even a service or smart device like an IP-enabled refrigerator, thermostat, or car. In order to rapidly innovate and remain competitive in a mobile society, an organization must have a complete mobile app development platform as it is beneficial in following ways:

• Higher Engagement, cross sell and Deepening of any customer relationship

For instance, a bank that uses a good mobile enterprise app platform with extended design patterns and support features like push notifications will have more control over how customers engage with their system and highly engaged clients can be sold other products. Simultaneously, customers will benefit from a much more convenient and efficient mobile banking experience that will further deepen the relationship by keeping more wallet share of their wealth with such a bank.

• Retention of existing customers:

Through the apps, organisations can do more data analyses from end-users, draw more insights, and ultimately interact with end-users in a way that allows better understanding and matching the customer needs and more personalized services. Such higher engaged customers through the use of apps will remain with an organisation for a longer period.

• More business through Referral of new customers by existing happy customers: organisations can get more referrals for new clients by incentivising the existing engaged customers for the same.

Challenges and Way forward

• Merely developing a Mobile app is not enough it might fetch a success for a limited period, but for its long term survival it is very important to introduce new ways of enhancing user experience. With time, new things are introduced, and the old ones make way for them. Therefore, keeping an eye out on the technological advancement to making a ubiquitous presence for your app. No matter how attractive your app is or how unique it is, if you fail in this aspect, you will miss out on a lot of things. In simple words, exceed your user’s satisfaction, and your app will be a success. Give them a reason to stay.

• Security is one of the biggest challenges that developers face during the development stages and with the technological elevation it has become a critical need to address all the security issues like accidental leakage of data, insecure data storage and broken cryptography. Hackers will continue to find faults in the app and would exploit the known security gaps. Therefore, secure mobile apps are also one of the direction that one should look forward to.

• With the increase of phone devices and apps, the user experience is becoming very important and App Developers need to check and upgrade the apps from time to time. For this, data analytics can prove to be beneficial, and if upgraded from time to time as per user’s latest requirements, mobile application will survive for a long term since the market potential is huge and marketing promotion, selling, customer care, after sales service etc. are possible through mobile apps.