When manufacturers look at one of their smart-home products for the Internet of Things (IoT), they see the complete product and all its capabilities—and probably view the mobile app as almost an afterthought. But in users’ minds, the mobile app they use to control a smart home product is that product, at least from an interaction and brand identity perspective.

For that reason, manufacturers need to focus clearly on the design and function of their mobile apps from the beginning and throughout the entire IoT product development process. It also helps for manufacturers to stay on top of trends in mobile app development so they can determine potential effects on the smart home market.

Here are a few mobile app trends for manufacturers of smart home products to consider:

• Increasing fragmentation of mobile device types. The range of mobile device sizes, configurations, and features continues to expand for both iOS and Android product families. Plus, continual appearance of new operating system versions forces manufacturers of smart home products to decide how far back to offer support in their mobile apps. On the other hand, Windows and Blackberry phones are pretty much dead to consumers, so these mobile devices don’t need to factor into manufacturers’ IoT mobile plans.
• Far-reaching consequences of choosing between native code and hybrid code. Using hybrid code is less expensive for mobile app development because it uses languages (such as C++ and C#) that even less experienced developers know. Using native code costs more because it requires higher-priced developers proficient in languages, such as Java, Objective C, and Swift. But native code can significantly speed time to market and makes future iterations easier to complete. With hybrid code, every iteration essentially becomes a custom programming effort. Still, manufacturers face a difficult but important decision about which direction they will take with their mobile app software code.
• The growing complexity of interoperability, along with rising consumer expectations. In general, users expect that their smart home products will all work with one another, much as they expect all the components of their home entertainment systems to work together. But it can take significant development work to make a smart home mobile app interoperate with all the hardware types, operating systems, and cloud offerings appearing on the market—much less guessing which ones will be successful and help sell more smart home products: should a manufacturer build in support for systems such as Apple HomeKit, Google Nest, Samsung SmartThings, and WeChat, along with the emerging Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and other voice-controlled approaches, for example? What about which device-to-device, device-to-cloud service, and cloud-to-cloud connectivity to include? What are the costs to integrate at all these levels?
• Increasing value of truly great apps. Consumers don’t want 50 apps to control 50 smart home products. On the other hand, they don’t want one badly designed, unwieldy app either. The key is to build mobile apps that provide a great user experience—apps that consumers will want to use—and includes just the right number of features. A hard lesson for manufacturers to learn is that hardware features don’t always need to be mobile app features. Each smart home product’s features should be broken down into primary, secondary, and tertiary features; only primary and perhaps a few secondary features should appear on the mobile app. The rest can be handled through touchscreens or other direct interaction with the smart home product itself.
• Continued expansion of new features in mobile apps. Instant apps on Android devices, home screen widgets on iOS phones, geofencing, Bluetooth beacons, touch authentication—these are a few features coming soon to smart home products. While manufacturers need not jump on every advancement, their mobile apps should incorporate those new features that add value to their smart home products.

Mobile app development is rarely a core competency of manufacturers that make products now being IoT-connected to create the smart home market. But increasingly, the quality of the mobile app will be how smart home products are overall judged.