
Top Challenges faced by Android App Development Companies in 2020
Android
is the most popular platform for mobile application development today.
Currently, we have over 2.5 billion active Android devices. The Google Play Store
features more than 2.9 million android apps. Software development
companies have noticed this trend and are increasingly building
state-of-the-art Android applications with brand-new
features and functionalities.
Notwithstanding
these opportunities, there are a plethora of hurdles that any Android app
development company faces during different stages of mobile application
development.
In
this blog, we will offer a rundown on the top challenges faced by Android app
development companies in 2020. So, let’s begin without ado.
1) Software Fragmentation
Every
year, Google releases a new Android version with novel features and
enhancements. This makes it challenging for Android app developers to stay
abreast of the latest developments in Android.
Also,
the adoption rate of newer versions of Android is slow. As a result, an Android
app development company has to target multiple Android versions while
developing an application.
2) Device Fragmentation
Device
or hardware fragmentation poses another challenge for Android development
companies.
Android
is an open-source operating system. Google allows Android to run on a wide
variety of mobile devices. The hardware features offered by these mobile
devices (e.g. Samsung, Sony, LG, Nokia, Xiaomi) vary widely.
So,
any two mobile devices that run on the same version of Android may have very
different screen resolutions, screen sizes, cameras and other hardware
features. App developers have to take this fragmentation into account so as to
ensure every user enjoys a personalized, seamless user experience.
3) Lack of Standard User Interface
Google
allows mobile device manufacturers to customize the Android operating system as
per their needs and objectives. They can design a customized user interface for
their device. As a result, the user interfaces of different Android devices
differ widely.
This
creates new challenges for Android app developers-they need to test the user
interface of their app across devices using emulators and have to come up with
ways to make the app compatible with every single device.
4) API Compatibility
Many
Android app development companies use third-party APIs to improve the
functionality of a mobile device. Sadly, not every third-party API available
for Android app development is of premium quality.
A
large percentage of these APIs are created for a particular version of Android
and, therefore, do not work smoothly with other versions of the operating
system. Android app development companies, therefore, have to devise ways to
make a single API work on all Android devices. And this, of course, is a
challenging task.
5) Choice of Programming Language
Currently,
there are two highly popular programming languages for Android devices-Java and
Kotlin. While Java is an object-oriented programming language that developers
have been using for over two decades now, Kotlin is a relatively new language
with modern features. Kotlin offers a range of features that simplify
application development and code maintenance.
While
Android Studio, the official IDE for Android as well as a lot of Android
devices support Kotlin, a lot of Android development frameworks still do not
support the language. For this reason, any Android development company finds it difficult to
select the right language for application development.
6) Security Issues
Being
open-source, Android allows developers to customize the OS according to their
specifications. This flexibility makes Android vulnerable to security attacks.
No wonder, we often hear of Android devices being compromised by security bugs
such as Installer Hijacking, FakeID and mSRT.
All
this poses a challenge for any Android development company; they need to
incorporate robust security features and encryption mechanisms in their
application in order to protect the users from security attacks.
7) Patent Issues
Unlike
its competition Apple, Google does not have stringent guidelines for evaluating
the quality of apps that get uploaded on the Play Store. This lack of strict
quality assessment makes it easy for any Android development company to build
and upload apps on the Google Play Store.
This,
however, also results in a lot of patent-related issues in Android apps.
Developers, often ignorant of the patent rules, include a lot of features and
functionalities in their apps that are protected under the patent law. When
these developers are challenged, later on, they have no option but to modify the
existing application.
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8) Visibility of the App
As
already discussed, Google Play Store has over 2.9 million apps. So, Android
users have tons of options to choose from. Then most of these apps are free to
download. As a result, an Android development company has to conceive of all
possible ways to make their app stand out: they can choose a suitable name for
the app, insert the right keywords in the app description and/or promote the
app aggressively. Whatever method they choose to go with, grabbing the
attention of users is never easy.
Can you think of other challenges that Android app development companies
face regularly? Let us know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading.