IoT Mobile App Development: Points To Ponder Before Building

Over the past few years, IoT has transformed from a buzzword to an ever-growing concept that is connecting our everyday lives – both at the workplace and at the home.

The present-day world is adorned with smart homes, cars, watches, and appliances. And mobile apps act as an ideal bridge between the users and their devices to easily manage the Internet of Things devices. The vast benefits and opportunities offered by IoT technology have penetrated in the arena of mobile app development as is palpable from the following statistics:

The IoT technology and mobile app development amalgamate to result in an ideal IoT product. But what should be done in order to prepare for this process and make the app a success? There are a number of factors that affect the development of a custom app interface. If you are planning of building a mobile app to connect with the IoT devices, here are some IoT mobile app development tips that you must consider to fast-track your development project:

● Provide Scalability to the App

8 years ago, the worldwide big data market size was less than $8 billion, which is expected to grow to $88.5 billion by the year 2025. Apart from this considerable rise in the volume of data taken care by IoT, the technologies related to the field are also evolving.

In this type of situation, it is vital to build an IoT based application that is scalable – able to keep up with evolutions in tech, capacities, and global smart sector. If the design is not scalable, your product may end up becoming stagnant and useless in a few years time.

● Follow ‘Object-First’ Strategy

Building an IoT mobile app is more different and cumbersome when compared to general app development. No doubt, the mobile app should be optimized and user-friendly, but, the foremost point to be focused on is the design of the IoT hardware.
Note down the functionalities and features required in the device, create a rough idea of the development of the device and the way sensors will be connected to it and then build the ‘smart object’ as per the requirement. Building an app in prior to the roadmap and then trying to fit an IoT object to it is not at all considered an intelligent idea that can result in an epic failure.

● Make A Robust Plan When the Wi-Fi Goes Out

Adding Internet-enabled features to products is very easy but while performing this task it can become lethal if you forget about the scenario when there will be no internet. What’s the use of those devices that won’t work once the Wi-Fi is down. Many big IoT failures in the past few years report this to be the major loophole for their project failure.

An IoT product is basically two products: one is connected and the other is unconnected. If the product becomes usable even during the disconnected state, then the user is in the ultimate control of the device, which is a concern among various IoT-wary potential customers.

● Security Breaches

The first alphabet of IoT stands for ‘Internet’ and the internet is a favorite place for hackers. One of the biggest challenges faced by IoT mobile app development industry is dealing with security breaches and hacks.
In order to avoid such situations, you have to prepare these three stages in terms of security:

1. Data at rest: Data residing in the cloud or network of the application is called to be a data at rest. It is advised to use an assortment of software and hardware encryption methodologies in order to ensure the robust security while data at rest.

2. Data in use: The data accessible to the user or device is very hard to secure. So, to make the data secure in this stage, it is recommended to employ a strong authentication process.

3. Data in flight: Data accessed during the flight mode can be made secure with the use of encrypted, outbound communications. This lowers the chances of data to be hacked when transmitted in the flight.

How to Build an IoT Based Product

Every solution in the sphere of IoT is made up of two important components:

● Hardware – It can be a Bluetooth sensor connected to the internet or can be a third party device like Beacons. Apart from this, as mentioned in the blog, the smartphone of the user can also be used as a hardware part of an IoT device.

● Software – It is a mobile app/web dashboard of IoT based product, which is used to manage the IoT hardware, control the IoT data collection, and the information access sourced by sensors.

Although it is considered that hardware is more critical and difficult to implement, however, the software component should also be given equal attention for an ideal IoT- based product delivery.

Final Thoughts

The constant rising number of internet and smartphone users along with the progress of IoT technology will pave the way for the evolution of mobile app development. Hence, in years to come, businesses will come up with unique IoT mobile app development ideas to target the potential customers.

However, it is vital to give rational thought to the concerns related to developing IoT based mobile apps if you intend to prevent the project from going off the rails.