Deloitte Economic Advisory 53 / 62
Future developments in apps
“Innovation will continue, there are fantastic things to do and many problems to solve.” P.
Abel, Escapadou
Interviewees agreed on the importance of connected devices for the mobile app
sector. In particular, app development for medical and health-related connected devices will
further develop. If connected devices, such as connected watches, are already largely adopted
by individuals, professional adoption in the health sector is less advanced. In Europe, “Doctors
are not equipped for remote monitoring with connected objects and applications” observes A.
Normand, who previously worked at Withings. In the future, mobile apps will be used to
“aggregate telemedicine data to identify at-risk patients in heart failure, diabetes, hypertension,
etc.”
F. Ronchi identifies digital identity as an area which will further develop. Many
technologies are included in this topic: “connection with public administrations, healthcare,
digital payments, etc.”
If mobility and micro-mobility are already important in the mobile app economy, Synesthesia
developers predict that “Mobility is a sector that will continue to grow. We saw the
explosion of electric scooters in cities and of ride-sharing. These services, that are enabled by
smartphones and apps, were quickly adopted by users. [….] This segment will continue its
expansion.”
At Synesthesia they press the idea that “a lot of trends we are seeing during [the sanitary crisis]
are going to set permanent changes on how people work, study, teach, get distraction and
entertain in the future. The digital way is going to be more and more wide-spread and accepted.”
If revealed true, many mobile app categories will see permanent changes:
• Education: During the lockdowns in many countries, education is provided online.
However, this evolution, imposed by constraint, reveals that the educational system is
not sufficiently prepared for this, which results in inequalities in access. The crisis might
accelerate the removal of real or perceived barriers to using apps and online tools for
education.
P. Abel (Escapadou) points out why mobile apps are an interesting tool for education:
“apps are not teachers but rather facilitators. Educational apps can guide children and
provide them autonomy in their learning process. For small children, using fingers on a
tablet is a very intuitive way to interact with a machine.” He also adds that these tools
can be effective for children with a handicap, for example for children on the autism
spectrum. He specifies that innovation in educational apps will be in terms of
“personalized education”: the app automatically adapts to the child’s level.
• Hybrid events: Due to the sanitary crisis, events go online. This might cause an
acceleration of the hybridization of events, “mixing physical and digital”. Mobile apps will
play a central role in hybrid events: “For these kinds of events, we need software and
mobile apps to let people interact just as if they were going physically to the event”
(Synesthesia).
• Health: the sanitary crisis demonstrates that mobile apps – because of the role they
play in data gathering, transmission and consultation − can be very useful for the health
and medical sector. In terms of mobile health, “everything that seemed desirable in the
long term a few weeks ago is now a self-evident fact”, says A. Normand. For example,