Mobile application development has significantly gathered pace in recent years. A steady increase in the number of developers working on this platform has been witnessed. With the focus of developers on this platform, the number of mobile applications is also accelerating drastically. The applications emerging are more creative and innovative than the ones before.
The growing competition is making the developers and software engineers explore new avenues. The core idea is to come up with something new that might click with mobile users and make the application successful. An emphasis is to provide increased functionality that convinces the consumer to use the application.
The retail market stands to gain a lot, if it fully understands the benefits that can be gained through this market and is able to utilize this platform to its advantage. Some are already going in this direction by offering more shopping specific applications to attract potential customers. There are already applications in the market that offer price comparisons for items at different shops. Some applications locate the nearby vendors and let the user know of the exclusive deals they have on offer. Apart from that, with easy access to internet from mobile phones one can read the product reviews and do online shopping while on the go.
Many people have been reported to shop from websites using their smart phone devices. ForeSee, a customer satisfaction measurement firm, according to its recent survey reports, that more than 33 percent people in United States had visited retailer’s websites via smart phone devices.
This trend might just change the shopping dynamics for retailers. Imagine being able to shop using your smart phone device and being able to purchase an item with a click, without having to actually walk in the store. The opportunities for m-commerce are limitless.
Today, there are number of mobile applications for the shopping category available for different platforms. If taken categorically according to platforms, it is assumed that there are more than 130,000 shopping apps available for Android smart phones. The number for Blackberry is estimated to be around 10,000 apps, where as the Apple store is believed to have 300,000 apps for shopping.
The mobile industry however, has only just started to explore this side of business and still has a long way to go. Going by the increasing popularity of smart phone usage, this industry is sure to see fast development. There are some concerns regarding the security and reliability of doing shopping via mobiles. However, with more mobile applications development better solutions can be worked out, bringing an improvement in the functionality of such apps.
