With ‘Freedom day’ approaching, how will it affect the Mobile App market?

Over the last few months, restrictions have been easing and with ‘Freedom Day’ in England scheduled for the 19th July, there are many changes ahead. All legal restrictions concerning social contact will be removed, with the advice of ‘proceeding with caution’ in its place. According to data from App Annie, the UK App market in Q2 2021 was dominated by covid-related mobile apps. As we head into a new phase of the Covid roadmap, how will it affect the UK Mobile App market moving forward?

Remote working

From the very first days of the pandemic, lockdown rules and office shut downs meant the shift to remote working tools and apps were not simply useful, they became essential. Communication channels such as Slack, Moom, Meet, Teams, it wasn’t just the web platforms that skyrocketed in usage, the mobile apps helped users as they adapted to a new way of working.

As return to office orders are starting to roll out across the country, so too are the policy changes that are being made to include work from home practices. So, although there may be an initial drop in activity, we don’t envisage this as the decline for remote working tools as more and more companies begin to investigate the long term sustainability and resilience of a hybrid or fully remote workforce.

Check in, Check out

After a slow start, and much controversy, the NHS mobile app finally came into its own over the last few months, as restaurants, venues and offices began to use the check-in features to help control and reduce the spread of the virus.

With all legal restrictions to be lifted, will check-in and check-out apps have any place in the market? For the next few months there may be some businesses that choose to still continue the Covid-model they have introduced, but realistically as we start to adapt to returning to how things were, these apps will either evolve into vaccine or health passports, Covid wallets and other necessary post-pandemic related applications that allow us to enter large gatherings, travel and still play a part in minimising the risk to public.

M-Commerce

For obvious reasons, the surge in adoption of Mobile shopping has been vital for many businesses’ survival when the brick and mortar experience was no longer available. Although web platforms still dominate the market overall, as brands began to look at ways to be different, to streamline their offering and to make things easier for consumers, many have built, or are planning to build native apps as the trend for online shopping is not predicted to shift.

Should you be looking to future proof your retail business by moving it to an app? There’s a lot more to consider in reality, but shifting to a better online experience even when the high streets reopen is recommended, if anything it allows an agility that could save your company should we face another situation like this again.

Edu-Tech

It’s been a tough time for children in schools, but it looks like the new term will resemble pre-pandemic education in most cases. Global E-learning has been on the rise for some time, again heightened during the pandemic, although not all applications were suitable for the shift in home-schooling.

The web platforms weren’t always sufficient and absence rates were high in some areas due to lack of devices, training, broadband. Although these are reasons which push for a return to the classroom, what it means for the future is that it has created a window of opportunity for developers and companies. The next few years they will need to design smart, affordable solutions for education of which mobile apps, due to their nature of being so much more accessible, will play a huge part.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Mobile App market looks as we head into the second half of this year. A sharp decline in any of the above is not likely to happen, but we may find a number of applications will now be seriously thinking about their evolution and future sustainability.