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.