2023 in Mobile App Development, and What’s Next for 2024

Tech is one of those industries where a year can make the industry unrecognizable. 

2023 started with small improvements: a deeper emphasis on first party data, a focus on IOT and internet-enabled devices, Smart products across the board. 

Now, at the end of the year, we’re working within a completely different environment than we were at the start – and it’s changing the way that we’re thinking about our business, and the way we do business. 

Here’s what’s changed. 

The rapid adoption of AI

Businesses started using AI in the later days of 2022, but it took another year or so for the capabilities of AI to really become obvious. By the time ChatGPT came around, AI integration for businesses mostly meant chatbots that could give a preset answer based on input from the client. 

Then ChatGPT showed the world that you could have an AI that talks and reasons like a person, cuts down on your time spent on more menial tasks, and could help you brainstorm and generate creative ideas – and that widened the scope of what AI could be used for. 

Rise of low-code, no-code

Low-code and no-code platforms aren’t new, but they’re definitely more popular by the end of the year than they were at the beginning, and a lot of that is tied intrinsically to the same rapid escalation of AI’s use. Low-code, no-code platforms solve a problem for software developers: sometimes, you need software developed with a quick turnaround time that can be adapted later. Low-code, no-code programs democratize the development in a way that means businesses can get their software faster, and frees up software developers to work on the aspect that might be trickier to perfect using low-code, no-code software.

Advanced AR/VR filters

Phones keep getting better, and with that comes the widening opportunity to implement the kind of AR/VR technology that was a pipe dream just a handful of years ago. It’s not just on phones – AR/VR took a boost last year with the advent of the Metaverse, and this year has seen some excellent work being done within the AR/VR sector that is based on that same line of thinking. 

Tepia’s 2023

On the ground, the way we work has had to change significantly. 

Most of our clients in 2023 came to ask us for one thing: implementing AI into their existing apps or creating custom software that would allow them to use AI. 

We’ve seen a lot of requests for low-code, no-code software in addition, which has taught us a lot about using those programs to turn around software at a much faster pace with the same level of polish, and to understand how to integrate our custom code with low-code, no-code platforms. 

Our clients are coming to us better informed about the tech that they want, and the end-goal that they want. Most of it is about facilitating stronger user engagement strategies, or making their app more appealing for users to engage with, which is understandable. Consumers today have a lot more struggling to attract their attention, and building an app that caters to that attention span is number one for the majority of our clients – so we see a lot of requests along those lines, and we’re more than likely going to see more. 

The world shrinks, when tech is involved. Nothing is really too inaccessible or too difficult to do; if anything, 2023 has taught us that the barriers to development and to actionable technology is far less than it was before. 

And that’s great. When the barriers for technology and development are reduced, things just move, break, and grow in ways that aren’t easy to predict, and they can throw entire industries on their heads. 

Tepia grew in 2023. We’ve added new team members to our roster who are experts in industries that we weren’t before, and 2024 promises to be a brighter year for us because of that. 

What about 2024?

We’re predicting more AI, more customer engagement strategies that focus on the individual, and more ways of breaking what we already know how to do in ways that people haven’t thought of yet. 

2024 promises a bright future, for Tepia and for the tech industry as a whole. It’s an industry that’s promising to prioritize the user: to create a more accessible and usable environment with a fairer view on data and AI use. 

The changes we saw in 2023 are just the tip of the iceberg. 

And we can’t wait to see what’s happening in 2024.