16 Exciting Mobile App ideas for iOS and Android OS

The landscape of mobile app ideas is changing with each passing year. Despite the overarching challenges faced by app developers and marketers, mobile app downloads will cross 258.2 billion USD by 2022 while it was 194 billion USD in 2018, according to reports. It does not seem to stop there. According to Statista, worldwide mobile app revenues to reach more than 935.2 billion USD by 2023.

Let’s face it, the times are getting tougher for mobile app developers. A report by Gartner estimates that merely 0.01% of mobile app ideas attained financial success in 2018 despite the total number of app downloads showing a rise of 10.6% between 2017 and 2018. 

Smartphones have penetrated our lives deeper than we ever thought. An average mobile phone user has almost 25-30 apps on his phone. Enterprises, small businesses, and even start-ups have realized the potential of a successful mobile marketing campaign. As a developer, you are always under pressure to ideate and implement a mobile app idea that helps the client business stay ahead of the curve.

Well, as it stands, the competition is cut-throat. With almost 5 million apps in Google and Apple stores, an innovative app idea is becoming the largest barrier for App developers as well as for entrepreneurs.

Are there brilliant mobile app ideas that are not worked upon?

We are going to solve this riddle for you as what follows are the ideas that not only encourage downloads but retentions also. We will be going beyond some ideas that we have, we will chalk a pathway to innovation, marketing, and user retention as well.

Get reading, bite-sized tips with tremendous practical value lay.

Top 16 mobile app ideas sure to go viral

An app idea is much more multi-faceted than what is usually perceived. Apps can be based on the audience’s needs or the need may be created. For example, for Uber users, a booking app is a need but, in contrast, PUBG is a gaming app for which the need has been created.

Before you sit down to build an idea make sure you have identified the target audience. While we leave that to you, here are the top 16 app ideas that enable a business to generate more revenue.

1) Virtual interior designing app

A virtual interior designing app can assist you in furnishing and decorating your room by providing the best possible options and solutions via virtual previews. All you need to do is take a picture of your room, and the app can virtually add suitable curtains, furniture, decor, and other appliances to it through employing augmented reality. This app can help you visualize your room and enable you to virtually change wall colours, experiment with light, add and remove curtains, furniture items, etc.

2) Disaster alert app

Some places are prone to higher seismic activities, tornadoes, snowstorms or more. An app that can detect the environmental activity in real-time can help its users recuse themselves much before their life is in peril. Such an automated app can suggest the users what they can do to save themselves.

Also Read:
Get prepared now with earthquake alert apps for California

3) Application for elderly people

We require special attention and additional care as we age, and elderly people are progressively becoming a large category of app users. Consequently, an app that can help them plan their daily activities, remind them about their medication and utility bills, or simplify ordering food products can genuinely make their lives easier.

4) Personal budget app

Budgeting allows us to allocate our finances efficiently by ensuring that we have enough money for goods and services that are essential and important. An app that monitors the way that we spend by recording our monthly salary and expenses can assist us in planning our personal budget and executing our financial activities responsibly. It can be designed in a way that allows us to preset our daily spending limit and send us reminders based on that. 

5) Mall navigation app

We often find ourselves lost in a shopping complex or mall that we have been going to for years. The struggle to find that one particular store amongst a myriad of others can feel like finding our way out of a complicated maze. It is frustrating and a serious waste of time. Therefore, an app that can help us navigate through malls and shopping complexes with ease is a definite requirement. It should be designed in a way that makes navigation simple by providing correct directions to shops, minimizing unnecessary effort and saving our time.

6) Event planner app

Organizing an event seems like an easy job but it isn’t and requires hard work. Therefore, an app that makes event planning seamless and trouble-free is a requirement in today’s day and age. The app can be designed in a way that simplifies event planning for any size gathering and enables users to create tasks for the event with due dates and timelines. It should also help us develop schedules, create to-do lists, manage vendor and guest lists, and keep track of the event from our smartphone.

7) Barter exchange app

Before the invention of money, people exchanged services and goods for other services and goods in return. Today, the ancient practice has made a comeback, obviously using techniques that are far more refined and in sync with trading such as online auctions and swap markets. Hence, an app that can serve as a platform that facilitates exchange processes among users who wish to barter various things like clothing, fashion accessories, office supplies, electronic gadgets, tools, books, toys, etc. is still relevant and the need of the hour. It can help you purchase an item that you genuinely require in exchange for one that you no longer need or use.

8) Restaurant reservation app

The average waiting time to grab a table for a restaurant visit is around 23-30 mins. While waiting time is a major driver of return clients, many food joints are turning to technology to help them optimize the waiting time and keep the chaos under control.

A restaurant reservation android app idea is a brilliant way to let customers save time when they pre-book their seats. The customers can check the floor plan and reserve a table using the mobile app. Nor does it just save customer’s precious time but it also allows food joints to serve the clients better.

9) Tax management app

The American population has spent 6 billion hours doing their taxes. There are so much manual work, calculations and collations to be handled to avoid being penalized. Tax Management has a perfect use case in every law-abiding country where the users pay taxes.

Right from the salaried population to businessmen, all can use the Tax iOS app ideas or Android apps that generate invoices, track your investments for tax exemptions and a lot more.

10) Food delivery app

In the last five years, online food delivery orders have doubled in size. With 26% of users ordering takeout once a week, the market has huge potential.

The market is ripe to receive an intelligent food ordering app that understands the user behaviour, makes recommendations and offers a single click delivery at near-zero costs.  While the competition in this landscape is high, the demand for a highly intuitive and great app idea is also very high.

Also Read:
Things to Take Care of While Building Food Delivery Apps
How Food Delivery Apps are Benefitting from Big Data Analytics

11) Travels app

Millennials are aggressively exploring different continents. To support this wave of change, a Travel app is a perfect technology tool. An app that allows easy booking of accommodations, air travel, and offers recommendations about places to visit based on the popularity and user choice.

Such as app would make travellers feel secure as the tour would be completely guided by the smart app.

Also Read:
How mobile apps are transforming the travel industry

12) Car parking app

A car parking space has become a bottleneck for the growth of cities. A GPS enabled Android app idea is a perfect solution to this modern-day challenge. It needs to be a simple to use app that can allow its users to locate the nearest possible park space almost instantly in real-time.

Although a very micro use case app, it is definitely a productive app that will receive a lot of traction.

13) Aggregator app

Indeed a wonderful idea. The social media users often spend a lot of time switching between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms. Why don’t you just go ahead and offer them an aggregator app idea that brings all these individual apps to a single platform? With focused marketing, such apps can go a long way.

It is a brilliant idea that will not even require too much of marketing because the great app idea itself is sufficient.

14) Utility booking app

A single app that can be used to book an electrician, plumber or even a parlour service where the user can track the helper in real-time. Furthermore, the app can also offer payment gateways so that the user has a record of all the bookings and can rate the helpers to be picked up over others. Such an app is perfect for both parties.

15) Public transport tracking app

People in the cities end up struggling to find the shortest and cheapest public transport options. An app that stores the local data and can even track the public transports in real-time can help regular commuters save a lot of time and money.

Apart from that if a user happens to visit a new place he would not be misguided by locals as he would have all the information available in the app based on his live location.

16) Digital receipt management app

The world is edging towards a Green world. Every business owner and the consumer is under an obligation to save paper. How about an app that provides a digital receipt of every purchase? This way both customers and businesses can keep a record of their payments and this would bring down the wastage of paper while generating receipts.

Cumberland Farms, a leading retail company switched to a mobile app and saved $11,000 per year with reduced paper costs. Even a simple idea can take you a long way.

There is no end to innovation. The ideas we suggested offer you a brilliant ground on which you can innovate further to build an app that gets featured on the App stores.

Tips on Innovation, Marketing, and Retention in the Mobile App Industry

The path to innovating simple mobile app ideas

Innovation is not rocket science, it is just ideas you get by keenly observing your surroundings. Plenty of entrepreneurs have the budgets to develop and market apps, but only a few of them can be creative enough to innovate. The better you can innovate, the greater are your chances of success.

To help you in the job, I am going to share some proven ways to innovate app ideas are:

• Stay active in App development forums
• Ask your target audience
• Address the user difficulties
• Combine two products or services that complement each other
• Stay updated with the latest patents
• Run customer quizzes and incentivize them for an innovative idea

Developing a monetization plan

Ideating, building and launching an app is a risky endeavor as it involves cost. Everpix’s epic app failure story made app developers learn some hard facts about how the app market operated.

By 2012 Everpix had garnered 55,000 active users but by 2013, the app was shut down. The major reason for the downfall was the missing monetization and marketing plan. Some of the most popular monetization plans that have stood the test of times are:

• Running native ads
• Subscription models
• In-App purchases
• Affiliate set up
• Partnerships

Making users stick to your app

Marketers have stats that prove acquisition is easier than retention. A good retention rate is expected to be that the app user must return to the app at least once. Let us look at the ways how can retention be achieved.

• Make app onboarding easy
• In-app messaging
• Push notifications
• Personalization
• Predictive Insights
• Remarketing
• A/B Testing
• Create omnichannel experience

Wrapping Up

Today is the perfect time to redefine the app development strategies by focusing on building innovative mobile app ideas. An innovative idea builds a strong base for a successful app. The plan is to improve the business, generated by the apps. The above-given ideas if used properly will provide you a great platform on which you may innovate to take your app to the next level. We as a trusted iOS app development company and android app development companyand we can help you build a secure and robust app.