The last few years have seen a surge in mobile apps usage, with more than 500 million apps downloaded daily. At this point, it won’t be wrong to say that apps have become an inherent part of our lives. Similarly, to be in the game, businesses need to stay ahead of the tech curve. To do that, they must meet the criteria, i.e convenience, and comfort.

If you are someone who’s trying to develop an app for their business, the first question that will pop in your mind is, “what type of mobile app should we develop?” You read it right. With a wide variety of choices available, choosing what suits your customers’ needs the best might be a little challenging.

Although developing a mobile app is a technical job, we can help you understand the differences and other aspects of mobile applications to make an informed choice.

So, let’s dive a little deeper and determine where you can fit your mobile app’s idea.

Mobile Applications: Defining Categories

If you go by the categories mentioned in the Google Play or App Store, you will find more than 30 and 20 categories of mobile apps simultaneously. But, I think they went a little overboard in dedicated categories.

Ideally, there are only six defined categories that you need to know before beginning the process of developing your app. Keep reading, and you will see the categories of mobile apps available.

Breaking Down Mobile App Categories

You can start the development process only when you understand the type of mobile app you wish to develop. So, here we bring the list of mobile apps that you know about.

Lifestyle

These types of apps have grown in popularity over the past few years. In this type of app, you can support individual facets that are a part of your user’s lifestyle. For businesses in Fitness, Dating, Food, Music, or Travel can use this category. Since these are the apps that users turn to daily, these apps must have updated and upgraded information. Plus, you need to “wow” your user if you want them to consistently use your mobile app. For example, apps like Spotify, TripAdvisor, Uber are gaining traction every passing day.

Social Media

Social media itself has broken all the records over the past decade. People nowadays spend more time on a social media app than others. Facebook alone has more than 1 billion active users. Naturally, a lot of businesses wish to try their luck in this particular niche.

To those who have an idea of developing a successful mobile app, ensure that it is fast, fun, and easily accessible. Other than that, it should be designed so that you can continuously integrate new features to support your customers’ needs. Apps like Instagram, Strava allow users to share their experiences through social platforms socially. The functionality of these apps attracts users to come back again and again.

Utility

These are those apps that a user often gets preinstalled in their phones. They serve mostly single functions. For instance, reminders, calculator, flashlight, or weather apps are not used often but tend to have importance in the lives of the users.

Adding any new feature might increase the frequency of its usage, or else you won’t be able to monetize it. If you can’t get it to your revenue stream, then what’s the point of creating it in the first place?

Entertainment

This is an industry that’s huge and very competitive. Games are, no doubt, the most prominent app categories. Plus, they are popular among developers, too, since they can get players back to the phones multiple times a week. For instance, games like Angry Birds, Subway Surfer have grown leaps and bounds.

The idea is to keep users engaged with the ease and complexity of the gaming feature. If you can do that, your app will surely get the desired success.

Productivity

With most employees working from home, the popularity of these apps is increasing much faster than expected. While it might sound a little monotonous, the right apps help users get their work done more quickly. Thereby, making them efficient. Such apps are indispensable if you test app design while keeping in check all the vital features. For instance, apps like Evernote, Wanderlust, Google sheets help users to keep track of their ongoing and future tasks.

Information/News Outlets

These are pretty straightforward apps. However, if they are cluttered, users usually leave instantly. The navigation of these mobile apps is a lot more important. Developing these apps requires constant information updates verified from all the known sources.

A single mistake can hugely impact the credibility of your app. You can take examples from apps like Buzzfeed, Google News, Reddit, LinkedIn Pulse.

So, these were the categories that you must be aware of. But your responsibility does not end here. You must have a basic understanding of the types of technologies used in mobile apps.

Let’s begin!

Type of Mobile Apps Based on Technology Used

Ideally, there are three types of mobile apps on the basis of technology.

• Native
• Web
• Hybrid

Native apps are usually created using a single platform or OS, while web apps are created to be easily accessible through any mobile device or OS. The last ones are a combination of both the technologies used in native and web. Not every platform will be useful for the goals and mission of your brand. So, if you want to optimize your customer experience, it’s important to use one of these technologies after weighing all the pros and cons.

Wrapping up

Choosing the type of mobile app is not a decision you can make in an hour. You need time and a team of experts to build an app that will give your brand the boost you aim for. Also, UX and UI factors must never be left out to create a perfectly balanced mobile app for your customers.

Just make sure anything you make must have customers’ needs and wants at the heart of your decision-making decisions. Otherwise, you won’t be able to reach your ultimate goal, i.e., keeping your users engaged.