Learn why Flutter is a good choice for cross-platform apps that run on mobile, desktop, and web.
Read moreBeing a Google product, Flutter is the staple technology behind many of the company’s products: Google Pay, Stadia, and Ads. But the list of companies who trusted Flutter with mobile app development is much larger, encompassing brands such as Alibaba Group, eBay, Toyota, BMW, iRobot, and Tencent.
Want more examples? Here’s our list of 15 brands that trusted Flutter with their software needs.
Discover highly popular and successful mobile apps built with Flutter. Learn how Flutter's robust functionalities have contributed to their success.
Read moreWith every major release, the number of Flutter apps increases. When Flutter 2 was released in March 2021, there were over 150,000 Flutter-based apps on Play Store alone. At the time of Flutter 3 launch in May 2022, we had 500,000 Flutter apps already out there. That's a 455% jump in usage over two years.
By comparison, in August 2020, there were “only” 90,000 Flutter-made apps.
Here’s Flutter’s evolution with key improvements to the framework:
Xianyu by Alibaba is an ecommerce app for buying and selling second-hand goods. The app is built in Flutter and is available on both iOS and Android.
In 2017, the team at Xianyu conducted an in-depth comparison between available cross-platform development platforms. The analysis favored Flutter, which offered a better development experience and faster testing capabilities compared to, for example, React Native.
At the time, Xianyou was struggling with hiring challenges and the shortage of talented iOS engineers, which hindered the company’s app development efforts. Flutter helped the team solve their recruitment problems. With Flutter, the company could adopt a flexible team structure. Also, apps built with Flutter performed better according to Xianyu’s internal test results.
Easy implementation, minimal learning curve, and hot reload feature helped Xianyu launch new product pages quickly. After initial success, Flutter became a standard part of Xianyu’s tech stack, speeding up development and improving the cross-platform experience for end-users.
The Xianyu app now has more than 50 million downloads and 10 million active daily users.
More about Flutter and Xianyu by Alibaba
Google Stadia is a cloud-based video game streaming service that lets you stream games on a smartphone, PC, laptop, or tablet. What made this app so popular among gamers?
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In 2019, John McDole, the leading UI engineer at Google Stadia, said they used Flutter to build the Stadia mobile app. According to their blog post, the Stadia controller setup was one of the most complicated parts of the mobile app. But Flutter made writing and maintaining Stadia's controller setup a more manageable task.
According to the official blog, Flutter was instrumental in speeding up the development of the controller setup flow. Writing code in Flutter was faster and almost doubled the team’s productivity. Flutter also helped maintain cross-platform consistency for Google Stadia.
Google Stadia used the available custom Bluetooth plugin logic, which reduced the quantity of code to be written. The team was able to deploy features quickly across iOS and Android versions. Flutter’s shared codebase and hot reload capabilities increased the speed of development. Also, automated testing using Flutter was fast and reliable.
eBay’s automobile portal eBay Motors, is one of the most popular apps built with Flutter. The app lets you buy and sell vehicles and accessories, discover new listings, and connect with car buyers and sellers.
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Hot reload and automated testing allowed them to test functional prototypes quickly. The development experience was seamless, and apps delivered a consistent user experience.
Flutter’s code-sharing capabilities sped up the platform-specific integration deployment process. The team used available Flutter plugins to integrate device APIs quickly.
According to the team, Flutter’s capabilities (shared code, hot reload, and “write-once use forever” philosophy) let the team deliver new features in record time.
More on eBay Motors and Flutter
Google Ads is one of Google’s flagship products, and its mobile app is a great extension of the desktop version. Google Ads mobile lets ad managers track and control their campaigns on the go.
As the creator of Flutter, Google actively uses the framework to build its own products. Google Ads mobile has just the right ratio of desktop features to satisfy the needs of millions of users across the world. The app is fast and responsive, rendering graphics quickly for an optimal user experience.
Google also chose Flutter to tap into convenient scaling options and reduce the need to maintain two codebases for iOS and Android.
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The New York Times used Flutter to create a cross-platform app for their readers. Read by millions every day, NYT was looking for new ways to engage their readers and improve the user experience.
Flutter’s cross-platform capabilities helped NYT launch a platform-independent app — the popular KenKen puzzle.
Offering a seamless experience across platforms is always a challenge for developers. Flutter’s single codebase allowed the team to launch KenKen Puzzles for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and the web, simultaneously.
Flutter facilitated real-time iteration and saved time on building and running multiple betas. This let the NYT team launch a seamless version of KenKen puzzles across platforms quickly.
The app became the first commercial Flutter web prototype to debut at Google I/O 2019.
The Hamilton app is great for all fans of the musical. By giving users additional ways to interact with favorite characters, Hamilton keeps engagement at a high level, ensuring fans stay active long after shows.
The Hamilton team built the app in three months with Flutter. Flutter made it possible to release the app for iOS and Flutter with eye-pleasing designs and fast performance. The team considered other frameworks such as React Native or Xamarin but both lacked the tools available in Flutter.
MyBMW app lets BMW owners interact with the car — lock, unlock, locate, monitor, and navigate using their mobile device. The app serves as a single-point solution for managing car ownership with good user experience.
My BMW app was primarily built for iOS for different vehicle models and variants. Though it had an Android version, feature discrepancy was a major challenge for BMW. BMW ownership experience was inconsistent for iOS and Android users affecting the brand image.
The company had two fundamental goals to tackle the “platform disparity” problem:
Flutter helped them tackle both challenges. BMW had several car models and brands under its umbrella, each requiring a dedicated app.
With Flutter, the BMW team launched the new MyBMW app to deliver a cohesive and seamless ownership experience. An internal platform powered automated builds and testing of unique app versions for different platforms, markets, and sub-brands. This saved BMW thousands of hours every month.
Thanks to Flutter, BMW deployed more than 10000 versions of 96 different variants of the My BMW app in record time. Plus, the problem of managing multiple code bases was resolved after migrating to Flutter
MyBMW App offered a consistent user experience across iOS and Android for all models. This improved app reliability and preserved the brand’s image in the eyes of the customers.
Topline is a music production app for artists to save their music ideas. Artists can record tracks, add lyrics, compose creations, anywhere, anytime. The app saves everything on the cloud, so artists are never worried about losing their record-breaking beat.
The app was launched by Abbey Road Studios for iOS, originally. The ideas' novelty and utility made the app an instant hit. Though an Android version was not planned initially, persistent demand made the developers look for options.
Building a music production app on Android is trickier than iOS due to audio latency issues. Limited resources and a small team added to their problems.
Choosing Flutter for cross-platform development made sense to the Topline team as they could launch both Android and iOS versions with a single codebase.
According to the Topline dev team, Flutter helped them quickly build, launch, and deploy without much hassle. The team added a neat swipe menu and launched Android and iOS versions in just 10 weeks — a seemingly impossible ordeal if they’d developed natively. The app became immensely popular and was officially featured on Google I/O 2018 and Flutter Live 2018. In 2018, Topline also won the Top UK App Award.
Reflectly supports mental health by encouraging users to write daily entries as a vent to nagging feelings or thoughts. The app uses AI to give personalized insights and ask users specific questions to help them dig deeper into the entries. Reflectly is more than a journal app and mood tracker — overtime it creates graphs with feelings analysis and sends personalized quotes to inspire users.
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Reflectly was built in 2017 using React Native. The team had big expectations, which React Native didn’t meet. The animations were sluggish and the cross-platform development experience was subpar. In 2018, the team decided to try Flutter. Initial experiments delighted the team and Reflectly migrated to Flutter.
Based in Santa Clara, California, Realtor.com is a popular real estate company and the second most visited real estate listings website in 2021. Until mid-2019, their organizational model had two separate Android and iOS development teams and codebases, which became an overhead later. After recognizing the benefits of having a single codebase, the company started implementing new features using Flutter’s Add to App feature.
Adding Flutter to the existing mobile apps brought many benefits. For example, it freed their web developers from having to learn two new languages and frameworks. Moreover, the ability to develop features for both iOS and Android at once increased their productivity. Feature release and code changes now require only half developers than earlier.
Sonos lets you listen to music from popular streaming services like Spotify, Gaana, or Apple Music on any speaker. People use the free Sonos app on their mobile, tablet, PC, or laptop to connect their home speakers to streaming services.
Sonos started using Flutter in 2020 for their app development endeavors. Their existing app had several issues, including a confusing (and buggy) speaker setup wizard.
Flutter increased the development capabilities of the Sonos team. The framework saved hundreds of hours and helped launch a refreshed and intuitive cross-platform app quickly.
They solved all existing issues and developed additional features that improved the user experience. Sonos revamped the UI and offered assistive features for end-users across all platforms. Integration of sound, animations, transitions, and walkthroughs was easy with Flutter.
The new features and UX solved the problems and delighted the app’s existing and growing user base.
Catering to 48+ million people around the globe, Nubank is one of the largest independent digital banks on the planet. The app improves access to banking by reducing complexity in underserved markets.
As the company grew, it couldn’t find enough native mobile developers to roll out new features. The lack of quality talent led to disparities between features on different platforms.
After carefully evaluating options for seamless development across platforms, they chose Flutter. Flutter outperformed all platforms in terms of development experience, documentation, or stability.
Choosing Flutter, Nubank hired local talent easily and onboarded them into the dev team within days instead of weeks. With Flutter, the team could launch new features simultaneously across platforms.
The hot reload feature and an internal developer tool built using Flutter helped speed up testing capabilities. According to Reinaldo Moreira, Nubank’s mobile engineer, Flutter enabled them to launch life insurance solutions within just three months which would have taken at least a year.
Flutter brought consistency to their product development efforts. It also improved their build time (from overall 70.45 minutes to just 9.9 minutes) and increased the team’s performance. Also, a single codebase made it easier to manage bugs, monitor the app, and correlate app metrics with other systems.
Beike supports people in finding their dream home and enjoying a great virtual house hunting experience in China. Beike lists 187 million properties in China and offers virtual property tours via a mobile app.
The company wanted a seamless app experience for its diverse user base. They aimed for a beautiful design with near-native performance on iOS and Android.
With Flutter, the company increased developer efficiency by up to 100%. Thanks to a single codebase, they could build essential features for iOS and Android simultaneously. Fast development shortened launch to a month.
According to the Beike dev team, Flutter let them scale without hiring a large team. Relying on the Flutter community, the team saved a lot of time thanks to several plugins, widgets, and solutions that sped up the development.
Today, the company has more than a dozen apps operating under the Beike umbrella. Together, the apps have helped 300 million families find and visualize their dream home.
Betterment is an online investing company that provides investment and financial advice. The Betterment team needed a solution that would help them better manage their mobile codebase. With Flutter’s add-to-app feature, Betterment connected the new code to its native codebase without impacting the customer experience.
Today Betterment has over 500,000 user accounts and 26 billion assets under management.
Google Pay is one of the world’s most popular digital payments apps with more than 100 million users across the globe. The app allows users to pay for goods and services and adopt digital payments in some of the remotest corners of the world.
Every region or country expansion required its own set of unique features. An increasing user base on iOS and Android led to a wastage of development resources due to the duplication of efforts for every feature. Also, finding and hiring more engineers was a constant challenge, too. Choosing Flutter for development made natural sense.
Flutter helped Google Pay consolidate engineering resources and save on building dedicated teams. With a team of 150 engineers, the team could rewrite and test the existing app with 300+ features. Google Pay, built on Flutter, was launched to 100 million monthly active users in the US and Indian markets.
Thanks to Flutter, Google launched a slick, beautiful, and efficient app, with a 35% smaller codebase. According to Google, they were able to save 60-70% on development time due to a single codebase.
Rapid MVP development in Flutter lets you validate your idea quickly while minimizing development time and costs.
Read more
Check how your business can use augmented reality to improve customer experience, increase engagement, and boost brand promotion.
Read moreWith relatively cheap implementation costs and easy accessibility, mobile AR is a great choice for a goal-oriented tech asset. Businesses can use augmented reality to increase customer engagement, improve brand promotion and awareness, and facilitate the creation of product demos.
Multiple high-profile companies are investing in AR tech. Among them are Qualcomm, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The two smartphone giants, Apple and Google, are particularly invested into developing their respective AR software development kits (SDK).
Update July 2022: There are almost 3.5 billion AR-enabled devices of any type, with 891 million Android smartphones and 1.25 billion iOS phones. However, the number of active users of AR is significantly lower. The potential for commercial adoption of this tech is still untapped
The AR market alone is blooming, with various forecasts projecting it to reach between 30 to 80 billion USD in the upcoming years (1, 2, 3).
No mainstream implementation of costly technology necessary to bring it to the users makes augmented reality that much more accessible. On the other hand, virtual reality or mixed reality headsets are still too expensive for such widespread adoption.
But what is all the fuss about? Can AR apps transform businesses and add tangible value? Check out how augmented reality is helping businesses.
Before jumping into the world of augmented reality tech, there are a few questions you have to answer.
If you want to include AR in your business strategy, first ask yourself what it is specifically that you want to achieve through an AR solution.
To give you an example: a problem can be something missing in the workflow.
Let’s say quality assurance at your company takes a lot of time to complete. The reason why might be that QA professionals need to comb through stacks of paper instructions to complete the process.
This inefficient approach results in a waste of time: seconds turn into minutes and minutes into hours. In the long term, it amounts to a significant drop in productivity.
Augmented reality could come in handy here by feeding all the steps and actions necessary to conduct a QA test into a mixed reality headset. The application would interact with and respond to the actions of the tester in real-time.
Here’s Renault’s road to quality assurance supported by mixed reality:
Wondering what companies use augmented reality? Let’s look at some of the use cases of augmented reality across industries and sectors.
The manufacturing sector is expected to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of cross-reality solutions. Combined with the rollout of 5G connectivity that offers speeds 100x faster than 4G LTE, augmented reality can be a huge opportunity for manufacturing facilities to improve a number of their processes and workflows.
The upside of using AR in manufacturing facilities is that it’s a fraction of the cost compared to investing in complex hardware.
Besides, augmented reality is much more convenient to exchange information since there are no physical restrictions such as cables, devices. Data is fed to the AR application virtually.
Onboarding. With AR, employees just starting out in a manufacturing plant could see interactive hints and instructions on how to use machinery, with all important information layered over the physical equipment. AR onboarding can increase employee safety and shave off ramp-up time.
See an example of using AR for training purposes at BMW:
Productivity. AR headsets equipped with AI technology could help employees get from point A to point B in the most efficient fashion, leading to potential productivity gains in the long term. Moreover, engineers could send a request for a specific part by simply pointing at it.
Operational information. With AR elements overlaid in a factory, manufacturing employees could have easy access to information about the performance of existing equipment and infrastructure. For example, interactive gauges over different areas on the assembly line offer real-time insight for employees.
Safety. Mixed reality solutions can inform employees about dangers (e.g., areas closed for maintenance/cleaning). And when an emergency happens, workers in need of help or assistance could transmit an interactive beam with their whereabouts.
Relying on complex technology and hardware, cars are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain for mechanics, who may not yet have the know-how necessary for servicing. The pace of the digital evolution in the automotive industry calls for improvements in various workflows and processes.
Remote assistance. AR-based remote assist lets engineers show other employees how to conduct complex repairs and service maintenance on vehicles.
Mercedes-Benz US is using Microsoft HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to help technicians perform maintenance activities remotely with the assistance of an expert engineer.
Training. Cross-reality workshops are a safe and efficient way to share information. Engineers can enroll in digital training where they learn the workings of complex machinery and how to assemble various parts. Instructors show trainees how to disassemble an engine without actually putting it apart.
Porsche says it has tripled the usage of augmented reality in their workshops. “Tech Live Look” is Porsche’s in-house app for connecting technicians with experts to help solve complex car repairs. Porsche has been using augmented reality for years.
Tech Live Look speeds up car service per vehicle by up to 40%, significantly improving Porsche’s customer experience.
See how augmented reality can be used in education.
Prototyping. Every new iteration of a prototype can be costly for an automotive company. Car prototypes can cost upwards of $100,000. Immersive designs aid in iterating and improving on product designs without companies having to spend anything on expensive prototypes.
Now, $100,000 might not seem like a lot for big automotive companies, but when we’re talking about multiple iterations, it can amount to a nice sum.
BMW is already using AR in vehicle prototyping. AR lets workers know faster if a component will fit once the production starts. Using AR in that way decreases the need for performing many test setups.
Content consumption. Enhanced with augmented reality, written content can be expanded to include immersive experiences. AR can also serve as a visual aid in non-fiction writing to better illustrate concepts and events.
Board games. Traditional board games could use augmented reality to enhance the level of immersion for gamers. Physical boards can be transformed from 2D experiences into interactive 3D adventures — the board stays the same while the elements turn virtual.
In the military, soldiers can use augmented reality that transforms sensor data into visual input to gain greater insight into their surroundings as well as to improve navigation.
Situational awareness. Sensors and cameras implemented in AR tech provide soldiers with more information regarding their surroundings. Other critical information can also be fed into a headset from headquarters.
Since 2018, the US Army has been looking into AR when developing the Integrated Virtual Augmentation System (IVAS). The IVAS provides mission-critical information to soldiers on the battlefield, for example, the system performs a quick object identification check.
Navigation. In aviation, augmented reality blends complex charts and maps into a pilot’s field of view, decreasing the need to check the information on displays.
The US Army is exploring the possibilities of augmented reality goggles for combat dogs. The idea is to give dogs in the field more contextual information, along with visual indicators that tell dogs where to go.
Ordinarily, soldiers guide their dogs with lasers or hand gestures. During a mission, however, it might not be possible for the soldier to be close enough to the dog to give it commands. This is where AR goggles step in, letting soldiers guide their dogs through visual cues rendered in the glasses. Additionally, the goggles attached to the dog’s head transmit what the dog sees back to the soldier.
Tenant instructions. Landlords renting apartments can use augmented reality to provide tenants with instructions. For example, to help tenants orient themselves around the apartment or explain how to use and locate different utilities.
Along with smart locks that eliminate the need for the landlord to hand the tenant the keys, augmented reality further decreases the necessity for contact.
Tenants simply put on a headset or turn on an app and explore the flat themselves with detailed instructions.
Immersive experiences. To advertise offered destinations and facilities, travel agencies can turn to augmented reality to create AR tour presentations. This way, customers get to experience interactive content and learn more about a destination. AR tour presentations also help travel agencies prepare offers with content customized to cater to different target audiences.
Moreover, to improve customer experience, travel agencies can equip their customers with advanced digital tour guides. These augmented reality guides can be further tweaked to include memorable and personalized experiences to tourists in a given location. For example, an AR guide could contain sightseeing places that match customer needs and preferences.
Explore the trends in mobile technologies in 2022 and what they have to offer for mobile app developers and smartphone users.
Read moreIn 2020 alone, it's estimated there were 218 billion mobile application downloads worldwide. The growing number of app downloads — and a steady demand trend — opens the door for many innovations in the world of mobile technologies.
Here are some of the top mobile app development trends.
A beacon is an inexpensive wireless transmitter that uses Low Energy (BLE) technology to send signals to nearby smart devices.
The beacons are battery-powered and located via Bluetooth — mobile devices can communicate with them even without an internet connection.
For example, Safetify was designed to turn down the volume on mobile devices of people who listen to music while crossing the street, until they safely reach the other side.
The global beacon technology market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 86% from 2017 to 2024. Beacon technology has transformed various industries, primarily retail and e-commerce, and it will play an integral part in increasing customer awareness by delivering location-specific alerts and notifications.
In marketing, using beacon technology is called proximity marketing. Companies such as Macy’s, McDonald’s, Woolworths, or Amazon Go are already using this tech in their on-site marketing efforts and to boost in-store customer experience.
The beacon technology can also be used to create the infrastructure for smart cities.
Enterprise applications operate in a corporate environment, and their primary purpose is to solve complex processes within an organization. Because how well a company performs often depends on these critical software assets, enterprise apps have to be built using reliable and scalable technologies.
Mobile cloud computing enables enterprises to store large amounts of data in one place securely. With the use of cloud services, employees can access this information quickly, which results in enhanced communication and more efficient work.
According to a recent study, the demand for these mobile applications has increased dramatically, and enterprise mobility is a top priority for one-third of organizations.
From default apps like Find My iPhone or Weather to Instagram, Uber, and Yelp, most apps today use geolocation. Many messenger applications let you share your current location directly in the chat. Even photos on your phone camera can be stored by the place they were taken.
Geolocation can be used as a way to deliver more personalized and localized content. Location-based services provide a better user experience, plus they can give companies insight into user demographics.
If you had one in the early 2000s, you were definitely the coolest kid on the block. Although in a different form, It’s no surprise these are making a comeback. Folding phones were among the major announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2020.
The emergence of foldable smartphones has created a new challenge for app developers. Dynamic adjustment of app content to fit the screen properly with the right amount of data requires careful planning. Foldables create an entirely new segment for developers to explore, one where plenty of opportunities for disruption await to be explored.
In 2019, global foldable smartphone shipments represented only a tiny fraction of the overall smartphone sales in 2019, but they are projected to increase 100 times by 2025.
The global shift from using cash as your primary form of payment has been happening for years now, and it appears we’re reaching a critical tipping point. Recent global payment reports show that mobile wallet payments are likely to exceed the use of cash in four years.
A wallet in your phone allows you to store all of your credit cards, debit cards, loyalty card information, and more. In addition, mobile apps like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay have revolutionized how we pay for merchandise at the checkout line.
Integrating mobile wallets into apps enables users to checkout quickly and seamlessly, with just a single tap.
The goal of an online retailer is to make their products available to buyers no matter where they are. M-commerce, or mobile commerce, is the buying and selling of goods and services through a mobile device, which helps online retailers reach their customers. M-commerce already accounts for over half of global online retail, which comes as no surprise given that mobile usage and searches are steadily taking over desktop.
Looking at these statistics, we might posit that m-commerce will dominate online retail in the nearest future. This calls for retailers to either optimize their websites to work on mobile devices or release m-commerce apps that offer much more in terms of customer engagement and experience.
In recent years, biometrics has become an increasingly popular form of identification due to its accuracy and reliability. Biometric systems use physical attributes like fingerprints or retinal scans to identify individuals. These are considered safer and more reliable than passwords because they cannot be easily shared or forged.
Biometric technology can be used in financial transactions, government agencies, healthcare facilities, and more. The cost of developing apps that feature this technology has dropped considerably in recent years. Hardware-wise, face recognition and fingerprint scanning have become a staple for many smartphone manufacturers, with Apple being one of the first companies to have implemented Face ID in their phones.
On-demand mobile apps let users order anything from food to laundry service, with just a few taps or swipes. They can be found in different places and formats: as standalone apps like Lyft, TaskRabbit, Postmates; inside other established services like Uber and Amazon Prime Now; or even embedded into social networks like Facebook messenger.
One thing these companies have in common is that they're all gearing up for an increasingly on-demand-driven world where consumers find it easier to find reviews and order a service directly from an app rather than browse through scattered reviews and make phone calls to order services.
The healthcare industry is projected as one of the greatest beneficiaries of augmented reality tech. Learn how AR is already reshaping clinical practice.
Read moreThe potential of AR is visible across industries. From education to manufacturing to automotive, augmented reality fills gaps in workflows, offering tangible opportunities for improvement.
For example, AR can be used to eliminate inefficiencies in manufacturing — the constant loss of focus and time necessary for the engineers to refer to paper instructions amounts to considerable losses over time.
If you've ever struggled with a paper instruction for a shiny new IKEA bookshelf, quality assurance in the automotive industry is like the IKEA situation times 1,782.4.
For extremely precise and complex tasks, the help of computers is invaluable. And the better the augmented reality technology gets, the more advanced its use cases in clinical practice.
In fact, the healthcare industry is projected to add a $47.9 billion boost to the global economy by 2022.
The current clinical practice is evolving at light speed, but the sector still has multiple areas in need of solutions that can benefit from technology.
AR is an entirely new concept to you? Read our AR guide to learn the basics of augmented reality.
Reconstructive surgery calls for a high precision to yield the expected results and improve a patient's recovery time.
Augmented reality goggles can be used to feed information from CT scans and MRI images directly into a surgeon’s field of vision. This way, the surgeon knows where blood vessels and bone fractures are and can increase the precision of the incision during reconstructive surgery.
First, surgeons perform diagnostic imaging on the patient. Then, the data from CT scans, MRI, and X-rays is digitized and transformed into a 3D model, which shows the location of soft tissues, blood vessels, and bones.
This rendering is then fed into the AR device. During the surgery, the 3D rendering is mapped on a patient’s body, providing the surgeon with critical information.
Thanks to this approach, surgeons don’t have to look back and forth between the patient and the images, or rely on audible Doppler ultrasound, which is currently the prevalent method during reconstructive surgeries.
The technology is far from mature, with many challenges waiting in line before mainstream adoption is possible.
For example, transforming information from CT scans and MRI into 3D models is time consuming — the ER won’t benefit from AR, at least for now.
Neurosurgeons at Johns Hopkins used augmented reality during spinal fusion surgery on June 8, 2020. Two days later, surgeons relied on an AR headset during the removal of a cancerous tumor from the spine of another patient. Both procedures were conducted using a pilot augmented reality headset from Augmedics.
In 2021, Dr. Harvinder Sandhu at Stamford Health performed a successful spinal surgery using AR goggles. The AR technology uses data from MRIs to overlay critical tissue around a patient's spine. Provided with detailed data projected directly on the retina, the doctor is able to perform more precise surgeries that speed up recovery and decrease the likelihood of infection.
Learn the differences between a proof of concept (POC), prototype, and minimum viable product (MVP) to know how to approach product development.
Read moreIn the world of mobile app development, a POC is a simple project that validates or demonstrates an idea. The purpose of a POC is to check if an idea can be developed and won’t consume excessive resources or time.
With a POC you essentially evaluate core functionality. If your app idea is complex, you can have many POCs to test each functionality.
User experience is pushed aside when you build a POC. That’s because it takes lots of time and work to create an optimal user experience, and that’s not the point of creating a POC. The goal is to validate technical capability.
Catch early investor interest. You can build a POC to present your idea to investors to acquire seed funding for further development.
Innovate. Innovation happens at the intersection of technological viability and market demand. A POC will help you check if your idea can be built using current technology.
Save time. When you check if your idea can be built, you automatically save time that would be wasted if you were to figure out technical viability issues once you hired developers and committed significant resources and time.
Pick the technology. Creating many POCs using different technologies can help you decide which technology stack is the most suitable for your project. This way, you’ll know early on what’s possible as you move forward and how to structure your product’s roadmap.
Check against the competition. If you plan to release a mobile application in a heavily competitive market, a POC will help you validate unique features in your offer. Your product will need to include a unique approach to solving the same problem to be a better alternative to what’s already out there.
PONS XR Interpreter
Companies around the world are increasingly embracing remote-work solutions and collaboration methods. We worked with PONS — a global publishing house and our long-term partner — to create a proof of concept for an XR cross-language communication solution supported by AI.
The POC helped validate if XR Interpreter could be used in a professional environment to make communication easier.
Learn what scalability is in mobile development and how to factor it into product creation.
Read moreIn simple terms, scalability is your application’s ability to handle a growing user base without affecting the user experience and the app’s performance. That means your applications’ infrastructure needs to be able to support a large number of requests per minute (RPMs).
Each user interacting with your application generates a request to your backend — the backend should process that request with a minimum delay. A highly scalable app efficiently manages many requests at once, delivering seamless experiences to users.
Vertical scaling adds more resources like CPU, memory, network capacity, and more to the existing application server. It’s powerful enough to handle a large number of simultaneous requests. However, adding resources can be limited depending on the capabilities of existing servers. Because of that, horizontal scaling is the preferred option in many use cases.
Horizontal scaling or scaling out adds more machines or servers with the application code to increase the capacity. The existing resources of the computing instances do not change, but the application logic may need to change to run in parallel. Popular in distributed systems, a load balancer will handle the incoming requests and distribute the load to multiple machines.
It’s not a requirement to use either horizontal or vertical scaling only. But you can have a hybrid system that includes vertically scaled machines in a horizontally scaled system.
Before jumping straightaway into scaling a mobile app, you first need to ensure you have a viable reason for it. Your scaling expenses need to match the growing user demand in your app to avoid unnecessary costs. Here are the questions you should answer that will help you decide whether the time to improve capacity has come.
By knowing the answers to these questions, you will have a better understanding of where you’re at with capacity and where you need to be to meet the spikes in demand. The information will also help you estimate the budget for scaling your app.
If you already have an application, discover where scalability issues may occur using application monitoring tools like New Relic AMP and AppDynamics. Using the chosen tracking tool, track key metrics like CPU, memory, and network usage. If any of these metrics show high usages, find out the transactions responsible for them. Take these results as a benchmark to find out where and how to inject scalability.
Your mobile app’s tech stack is the key to scalable mobile applications. Thus, choosing the right tech stack with a scalable backend and a responsive front-end technology is a must. If your current tech stack doesn’t leave much room for scalability, consider rewriting your app.
An app rewrite will be a significant investment initially, but when you consider a growing user base of satisfied customers, the ROI will follow soon. For example, consider Wallmarts' decision to transition into its legacy system to Node.js. With that decision, they have been able to gain 98% of growth in mobile conversion.
The application’s infrastructure plays a key role in achieving the desired scalability. Using Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions like AWS, Azure, or IBM Cloud for your mobile app is a great way to meet a variety of scalability needs. Cloud services have many scaling and pricing options.
For example, if you choose to deploy your app in AWS, the vendor will take care of all the necessary scaling demands on your behalf — many renowned cloud services offer auto-scaling where the app dynamically scales according to the current user demand.
You just have to define the required parameters such as how many maximum servers and other resources like storage, middleware, and networking the service should allocate. In addition, you also have the flexibility to change these parameters according to future app usage statistics. Scaling a mobile application that serves millions of users in a PaaS environment is an easy and flexible approach to scalability.
Caching is another way you can optimize the code for scalability. When you cache the frequently required data, it’s readily available and users can retrieve it faster. Caching helps significantly reduce the processing time.
For example, say your mobile app gets data from an API call. If you save the data in a cache, the next time another user requests the same data, the app won’t need to make that API call again since the data is readily available in the cache.
Caching is a highly useful approach to reducing the amount of data processing when the load is high. When you use caching correctly, it can also make the app work in offline mode.
Your app’s architecture can have a big impact on app scalability. For example:
Client, server, and the application are at different layers where each performs only the most essential tasks. This architecture simplifies each layer, thereby improving scalability and performance.
This architecture helps build flexible applications by making individual services loosely coupled with each other. Individual services of a microservice architecture can be scaled to meet the demand.
If you want to handle a larger number of user requests (e.g., a workload that exceeds the capacity of a single database), you can scale your database horizontally:
Mobile CDNs make content delivery faster because CDNs distribute the information from locations closer to the user. The content is delivered in a shorter time. Mobile CDNs are very useful when your mobile apps’ users are distributed across different regions.
Mobile CDNs are developed specifically to operate on mobile networks and deliver content to mobile devices faster.
Ruby on Rails and Node.js are two popular mobile backend technologies that help developers build reliable and highly available apps.
Read moreRuby on Rails is an open-source and server-side web application development framework based on Ruby and the Model View Controller (MVC) architecture. Ruby is famous as an easy-to-learn and beginner-friendly programming language.
There are many methodologies to choose from in software development. Learn the principles of Waterfall, Agile, Design Thinking, and Lean Startup.
Read moreThe Waterfall approach to software development describes a sequential process for building software—i.e., one step has to be completed before the next can begin.
In the Waterfall methodology, the project scope, outcome, and requirements are documented fully before any development begins. The documents, among many other aspects, include functional specifics, user interfaces, architecture, data structure.
The traditional Waterfall project structure is split into six phases:
Taking into consideration the principles of Waterfall and its resulting pros and cons, this methodology is best for building projects with clear specifications and client requirements. We can think of using Waterfall with projects that are simple, predictable, and well-defined.
For example, the Waterfall approach can be used when adjusting an application to meet specific regulations (e.g., when developing medical systems), or when integrating software with existing infrastructure—e.g., banking systems. In both cases, clear and detailed documentation and specifications are critical to successful project completion.
Here are specific project features that determine if the Waterfall approach is a good fit:
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The technology trends for 2022 are likely to be the continuation of the technological evolution and adoption that started in 2020.
Read more5G is a gateway to the realm of a mind-bending technological revolution. That’s not an overstatement — most of the technology trends of the future will be relying on that connectivity.
According to the annual state of the global mobile economy report by GSMA, by 2025, 5G will amount to 20% of global connectivity. And while the rollout pace isn’t yet astonishing, the hype around 5G keeps the public’s interest and curiosity up.
In 2022, we’re likely to see the expansion of 5G networks and the doubling of devices with 5G capability.
Activity trackers, phones, smartglasses, cars, cameras, and plenty of other devices collect data about you and your close ones. From your physical geographic location to your browsing history to even face recognition, companies have data galore about you.
The analysis of this highly personal data (your behavior, interests, and preferences) gathered by the Internet of Things devices is dubbed the Internet of Behavior (IoB).
The more we use online services and connected devices the larger amount of personal data we leave behind. Companies know very well about our political preferences, where we live, what we do, what we believe in, what our interests are, who we associate with, etc.
This data along with a slew of information coming from devices that are yet to enter the market (e.g., smartglasses that know exactly where you look at any given moment) will give businesses an unprecedented wealth of information to use to influence our behavior.
But the IoB also means several customer benefits — for example, the more data about driving patterns is collected from connected cars, the better driving experiences the automotive companies can build.
In 2022, we’re likely to see companies use the data from connected devices to create extremely personalized offers and products.
What is the metaverse, and what does it mean for the internet, brands, and people.
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Learn what a mobile app backend is and whether your mobile product needs it.
Read moreA mobile app backend is the brain of a mobile app. Among other things, the backend takes care of data processing, storage, and security.
The backend operates on the server, and it’s that part of the app that you don’t see, but your mobile app depends on it for functionality.
A mobile backend takes care of:
Heavy processing operations (e.g., retrieving songs when you open a Spotify playlist) need a mobile app backend because of the limited capabilities of smartphones.
The mobile backend runs on a remote server and communicates with the mobile app to deliver a feature to end-users.
The backend, unlike the frontend, runs without a graphical interface. A backend is an app designed for communication among machines and servers.
The mobile app backend server performs remote tasks and processes information to make the frontend app experience better. A hosted backend stays on remote servers that developers access via APIs (application public interface).
A mobile backend communicates with the app’s frontend to answer user requests. Together, they’re the soul (backend) and the body (frontend) of any modern mobile app.
Without the backend, the frontend is non-functional and without the frontend, an app wouldn’t be understood by the end-user (because there’s no visual layer).
But how does the communication happen? How does a machine-based backend understand what a human needs?
The answer lies in two-way communication via APIs.
When a user taps on the screen, the frontend sends a request to the backend. The backend retrieves the information required to perform a function via an API and sends back the final output to the frontend.
Let’s take an example.
Say, you want to buy your favorite pair of shoes on Amazon. You click the buy now button and go to a checkout page to pick the payment option.
The frontend (Amazon app) sends a request to its backend servers to connect to the external payment gateway. The result: you see a banking payment page asking for your payment credentials like credit card information, address, CVV, etc.
The API connects the backend and the frontend to the external service (payment provider) to display the payment page and pay for the order. The two-way communication ensures that the app keeps functioning seamlessly and offers the desired solution to the end-user, which in this case is to buy a pair of shoes.
Developing a project’s scope can be a challenge. Learn what to know before creating a scope for your product.
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Building a mobile voice assistant that reacts to a custom keyphrase is a complex process. Read about our findings from a technical feasibility study.
Read moreDuring the research, we implemented the first two subsystems — energy detector and voice activity detection. We also checked several options to implement the third step.
Implementing the energy detector — a simple algorithm that is checking the level of energy (sound volume) — was relatively simple. The detection threshold can be easily adjusted; we set it to detect any sound occurring around the device that might be a voice. The energy detector passes the recorded sound only after a positive detection.
To improve the accuracy and cut out too low and too high frequencies, the system can be augmented with a biquad filter.
We used Google’s open-source Voice Activity Detection library. The library is written in C, but there is an Android wrapper available that eases the use of the library.
The library itself is reportedly “one of the best available: it's fast, modern, and free. Google’s algorithm has found wide adoption and has recently become one of the gold standards for delay-sensitive scenarios like web-based interaction” (Source gkonovalov/android-vad).
The algorithm implemented in the library is based on the Gaussian mixture model (GMM), which is one of the commonly used probabilistic models. However, even the best GMM algorithms can't compete with the algorithms based on deep neural networks in terms of speed and error rate. The authors of the paper were able to lower the delay 87 times and achieve a 6.7% lower error rate.
RNNoise has a very good and highly performant VAD system. One can also opt for a more dedicated solution. RNNoise can be compiled into a Web Assembly. It's also present as a component on the WebRTC.
An offline wake word detector can be approached in two ways. We can ask users to record a keyphrase several (~3) times, upload the data to the server, use an algorithm to create a model, and use it in the app.
Another approach would be to create a universal model that can detect a keyphrase without any user interaction.
During this research, we checked a few options that implement one of the two approaches:
Howl is an open-source wake word detection system used in Mozilla Firefox. After saying "Hey Firefox," users start interacting with the browser. Howl is written in Python, and it's using the PyTorch machine learning framework.
After some modification applied to the source code, we were able to run the app and test it. The system works very well. It detects the phrase "Hey Firefox" quickly and with a very low error rate. The Howl repository describes nicely how to prepare a data set and train a model.
Using Howl to implement a custom phrase detection might work very well, but the building model procedure is not so obvious and requires a lot of data.
For example, for Firefox, the company used a Mozilla Common Voice dataset (~70 GB of short audio clips from users from around the world) as well as 632 recordings of “Hey, Firefox” from volunteers.
Howl also requires a CUDA-enabled graphics card with at least 4GB of VRAM (they used Nvidia Titan RTX) for the training procedure. Because we wanted to develop a solution for smartphones, we had to explore several approaches to see which was viable:
Precise is a wake word listener. The software monitors an audio stream (usually a microphone). When it recognizes a specific phrase, Precise triggers an event. It's written in Python, and it’s designed to run on Linux, especially on resource-constrained devices like Raspberry Pi.
The software is built on top of the TensorFlow framework, and the model is distributed as a .pb file. Unfortunately, Precise doesn’t provide an easy way to convert (or build) it for mobile devices.
Ideally, we would need to get .tflite. There even was some work done to convert a .pb file to a .tflite, but the branch that contains these changes still isn’t merged, and using it causes some installation issues.
Still, getting the .tflite file wouldn't be enough, because there are some calculations required before feeding the model with audio data. Precise provides instructions on how to train your model. You need around 12 recordings of the keyphrase to make the system work properly.
Snowboy is a hotword wake word detection framework based on deep neural networks. The tool provides an option to create two types of models:
PocketSphinx is a framework that analyzes audio transcriptions. The user can provide a transcription of the keyphrase that they would like to be detected. During our research, however, PocketSphinx turned out not very reliable. It detects a lot of false-positive signals that result in a poor user experience.
Picovoice AI offers an SDK for easily training wake words detection. Commercial applications require purchasing a commercial license. The vendor doesn’t provide any pricing guidance on their website.
Online services marketplaces have bloomed with the shift in consumer preferences toward digitally delivered services. Discover more about services marketplaces.
Read moreAs a business owner, you’ve probably used talent sourcing platforms such as Upwork or Fiverr for hiring. You’ve called for an Uber for your commute or booked an apartment at Airbnb.
But online services can also be pretty much anything where the product is a service. You can sell online fitness lessons, live meditation sessions, or product management courses.
In an online services marketplace, service providers list their offerings. Buyers browse the app and hire a service provider to get things done. The marketplace charges commission (either from the seller or buyer or both) to facilitate the service delivery.
In 2019, consumers spent close to $10 trillion on services, but only 7% of the services have been digitized, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. And while the pandemic has driven a lot of the services spending down in 2020, ecommerce and digitally delivered services grew to change the status quo moving forward.
The pandemic increased the demand for service digitization. People look for online classes, coaching sessions, and online on-demand services online. Also, as the economy is bouncing back, people are expected to spend more on services like travel, hospitality, and food delivery.
Even workplaces are adopting hybrid work models with gig workers as an important part of their workforce. In 2020, on-demand services and the gig economy saw a 33% growth rate — much more than the US economy itself. COVID-19 and The Great Resignation have spurred the need for online services marketplaces.
Here are some of the benefits of an online services marketplace app:
Little inventory required: No inventory or stock is required for operating a service marketplace. You earn commissions on every successful service order fulfilled by service providers.
Mobile app development process is a multi-step journey. Find out what's involved in it.
Read more
Every app starts with an idea — so that’s where you’ll be starting your journey.
Thorough idea validation is the most important step in the life of your app. You need to be harsh with your idea: there’s no place for kindnesses or leeways. If you won’t validate your idea properly, you’ll end up sinking resources.
You should be able to describe your product idea in one sentence when woken up in the middle of the night. Such clarity helps keep everyone understand the vision better.
To validate your idea, you can use a variety of available resources, such as the Lean Canvas or similar. These tools will help you narrow down your vision.
Templates that help in this phase:
Keep in mind that these are just frameworks that yield tangible results when created by experienced product managers. It’s not to say you shouldn’t do them — if anything they’ll help you put your idea into context.
When you approach a software agency, the team might want to fill out some of those templates too. Don’t let that discourage you. The vendor needs to understand your business context because, without it, the vendor loses key information that can lead to false assumptions and an obstructed workflow.
During product discovery, you should learn as much as possible about your target audience, competition, and monetization strategy.
You should be able to answer questions such as:
Keep in mind that the process of chiseling out a defined set of features (as understood by developers) depends on close cooperation between you and the software agency you’ll work with.
This process can take a lot of time in some cases. The reason why is that it takes time to narrow down your product idea. The more complex the product, the longer it takes to finish the process of defining scope.
During product discovery, you define use cases and create functional requirements. At the end of this stage, you should have a document with user interface requirements. UI requirements will later be distilled to specifications (e.g., user stories and the backlog).
Generally, in the product discovery stage, your vendor should aim for defining the minimum viable version of your product — enough to validate your idea and deliver initial value to your target users.
The conclusions you draw from product discovery determine the direction in which your app will move. A thorough analysis is therefore necessary to secure a validated idea that will be desirable but also technically viable.
Because every project requires a thorough analysis, you might want to hire professionals to help you in this stage of the journey.
Vendor-supported product discovery can be used in a variety of scenarios. For example:
1. If you already have a product but aren’t satisfied with it, a vendor should provide you with a comprehensive UX audit to pinpoint what your mobile application is lacking and what it needs to help you achieve better results.
2. You don’t have a product yet but want to:
A vendor can find users for initial tests of your product for a steady stream of validated learnings. Experienced software agencies can also check your competition and do market research.
A software agency can come in handy during those first steps of your app’s lifecycle. Reliable agencies with a portfolio of successful projects will have enough experience to support you right from the start.
Read our guide on choosing a good software agency for more details.
A time & materials contract gives you more flexibility and control over the quality and budget. In a T&M contract, you can introduce changes while your product is developed, which lets you include trends and address shifts in customer preferences.
In a fixed-price model, you usually follow a sequential order in product development: requirements and analysis, design, implementation, testing, deployment, maintenance. By definition of a Waterfall model, once requirements are complete, there’s little to no possibility to change the scope.
In other words, in Waterfall-based fixed-price models, you don’t have the flexibility to introduce changes once the project enters development. This can create a few problems:
Read why flexibility in time and materials contracts can improve your product's lifetime value.
Read moreA product’s LTV increases the more it continuously delivers high-value functionalities. To ensure your team implements these high-value functionalities, they need to stay in touch with customers during every stage of development.
By employing a variety of methods designed to get to know the end customer better, teams can focus on continuous product improvement and value delivery. These research activities should be part of the development process and decision-making.
Customer interviews bring out valuable insights directly from customers. Rapid prototypes and experiments help introduce these insights and see how they affect a product’s value.
In Waterfall projects, there's little space for experiments when the product is in development. The scope is fixed.
In fixed-price projects, once you do customer preference research before development, this activity rarely gets repeated in the later stages of development.
To be able to continuously deliver value and improve your product to increase its LTV, you need to involve the customer in the decision-making — in an ongoing capacity.
Digital projects are rarely finished with the first release. Take Instagram or Strava for example. Both applications have evolved tremendously over the years, with numerous new features and user interface modifications.
There’s always something that can be improved to deliver new value for the customers. These improvements can be ongoing, without the need for scope reevaluation — think of these improvements occurring every week or even every day.
With proper analytics set up, you see how those tweaks in the product perform.
Being close to the customer lets you discover how they perceive the product — in effect, you can make efficient decision-making where customer input drives the product.
Learn what makes estimating fixed-price projects practically impossible if you want to target shifting customer needs.
Read moreWhen a software agency can’t deliver a complete product within budget, they might restructure the initial team and let junior developers finish the work. This frees up their senior devs to pursue more profitable projects.
When a vendor nears the deadline but the product is far from being finished, the company might turn to quick workarounds or scope cuts. Quick workarounds make the product unstable and unreliable in the long term. On the other hand, scope cuts result in an unfinished product that doesn’t meet the initial requirements fully.
The fast and hectic decision-making process in software development projects makes it difficult to collect all the details upfront. Even with a detailed specification, there's always some level of assumptions on both sides.
For example, during development, it might turn out that certain parts of the app have to be written from scratch to secure a fully custom code that’s not limited by OS policies or third-party solutions. Another example can be the inability to use certain paid tools and libraries.
It’s close to impossible to learn which parts of the product need a custom approach before the contract begins.
It’s difficult for developers to validate all open-source libraries and plugins before they actually start implementing them. Conversely, when there’s nothing reliable in the currently available resources, the necessary plugins have to be written from scratch. If the available libraries are outdated, developers have to update them.
This goes on to show just how difficult it is to accurately estimate what will and won’t be available in projects that run for, say, half a year.
If a software agency doesn’t have any inflow of cash and is waiting for product release, it can run out of money to operate and as a result, abandon your project altogether.
With a partially finished product, it might be difficult for another vendor to take over the development work and meet the release deadline. The second team needs to familiarize itself with your business and the product.
Once a fixed-price and fixed-scope contract is signed, you can make very few changes. If a better solution enters the market during development, you’ll still have to go with what’s agreed on in the scope.
A vendor might also use the opportunity and valuate something simple as complex to make up for the loss.
That said, you might end up releasing a product that’s already irrelevant technologically.
Some complex software solutions take upward of six months to develop. Half a year is enough for consumer preferences to shift. As a result, once you release your product, market fit might already be lost.
Read about T&M contracts to learn how they work and how they give you control over product development.
Read moreWhen you know the team’s composition and hourly allocation for a month, planning for the development spending in the budget is easier.
Besides, in the T&M approach, you’re being charged only for hours devoted solely to your project. Internal duties like company workshops and meetings shouldn’t be included. That said, you should have access to timesheets and be able to regularly verify the invoice status.
Once the development begins but the design isn’t yet finished, changes in the design can influence the cost. This can go both ways, either increase or decrease the final cost.
For example, the greater the number and complexity of screens in a mobile app, the longer it takes to code them. So, whenever possible, the team you’re working with should suggest ready-made libraries that take less time to implement.
Good designers consult the design with developers during development. This lets them find solutions that cut development time but retain user experience.
In fixed-price contracts, software agencies usually add a buffer to set off any losses caused by a variety of internal and external factors.
In T&M contracts, a software agency doesn’t have to add a buffer to the final cost to ensure all unexpected expenses are covered. By principle, you only pay for the actual effort the team does on your project.
