5 Key Mobile Technology Trends for 2020: What You Need To Know

The year is only a few months underway, and so it’s a great time to look at what will be the year’s most important mobile trends in Mobile Application Development. I’ve sifted through what dozens of experts have to say and come up with these five key trends for the mobile app industry.

There’s been talk about next-generation 5G mobile networks for several years, but in 2020, experts say, it will finally begin to be deployed more fully. 5G networks are 100 times faster than 4G, with 10 times the throughput and a tenfold decrease in latency, as low as 1 ms.

Ericson says there will be 84 million 5G subscribers in 2020, a sevenfold increase over 2019. Mobile phone makers including Samsung have released 5G phones, and Apple is expected to include 5G capabilities into its most expensive phones this year.

Intel’s Network Platforms Senior Vice President Sandra Rivera explains 5G’s benefits this way: “5G is not just a new wireless access technology…5G is so much more than [extra speed]…The fundamental disruption that 5G will bring will be to move the compute [capabilities] much closer to the source of data creation and consumption.”

In my blog post last year about 2019 mobile trends, I highlighted AI as a key mobile trend. The same holds true for this year: AI and machine learning will make smartphones smarter. Mobile App Daily notes, “Its integration with mobile apps not only has made the apps smarter, but also saves a lot of time, effort, and money.” Mobile chatbots and virtual assistants will become more prominent, and AI will be increasingly used to detect and kill malware and intrusions.

For years, industry watchers have said mHealth (the use of mobile apps for healthcare) will become increasingly important. The Coronavirus pandemic shows how just vital it is already. mHealth tools are being used across the world to help track the pandemic and help stop its consequences.

The mHealth Intelligence website notes that it’s being used across the United States to deliver healthcare remotely rather than in person, following social distancing rules. And Scripps is launching a study to determine “whether mHealth wearable technology can be used to chart the emergence and growth of viral outbreaks like the Coronavirus.” Expect all that to be just the beginning.

“14 Mobile Trends That Are Dominating 2020” predicts that augmented reality (AR) will become one of mobile’s hottest trends this year. Mobile AR has multiple important uses for enterprises. Phil Hochmuth, IDG's program director of Enterprise Mobility told Computerworld, “On AR, businesses will spend on new mobile devices [and] hardware to help support enterprise use cases, such as medical AR, real-time data/schematic integration in industrial scenarios, etc.”

And, as I’ve previously noted, AR will also become a focus in manufacturing maintenance technology.

Finally, expect beacon technology to truly emerge this year. Beacons are small wireless transmitters that communicate with nearby mobile devices. They can help retailers better serve in-store customers, gather useful data, and do much more.

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