App Development Statistics And Trends to Watch Out for in 2024 And Beyond

In today’s digitally evolving world, technology takes center stage in how businesses harness growth opportunities, beat the competition, and deliver outstanding services to their customers. Building apps for internal and external purposes is one of the key technology trends transforming businesses across various industries.

Enterprise application development is helping businesses become more efficient while future-proofing their investment. But while every organization serious about achieving digital transformation goals wants to get on the trend, the cost and complexity involved in building apps sometimes make application development difficult for businesses.

However, thanks to recent innovations, especially in no-code and low-code development, businesses can now power their digital revolution and achieve innovation with a simpler and more cost-effective approach. Let’s discuss some of the current trends and opportunities in the application development landscape.

The serious demand for app development

• The global enterprise application industry's market size was $238.36 billion in 2020. It is expected to grow to about $527.40 billion by 2030, representing a cumulative annual growth rate of about 8.2 percent. This explains why more and more organizations are seeking to invest in getting their own custom enterprise mobile apps.
• According to a KPMG survey, about half of respondents (47 percent) believe the 2020 pandemic has permanently accelerated digital transformation. This has led to the rapid adoption of emergent technologies, including application development.
• According to Gartner, global IT spending is expected to hit about $4.6 trillion in 2023. This represents an increase of 5.5 percent from the previous year. Of this, $891 billion will be spent on software and app development compared to $793 billion for 2022, representing an increase of 8.8 percent.

Challenges to meeting application development goals

• According to Mckinsey, any attempt to improve existing business models through the integration of advanced technology has a 45 percent chance of delivering less profits than expected. 
• The skills gap is one of the leading challenges faced by organizations looking to transform their processes with digital apps, with most companies not ever aware of the skills needed to achieve transformation. According to a Gartner survey, about 53 percent of respondents say the inability to identify needed digital skills impedes workforce transformation.
• The high development cost is one of the leading challenges of enterprise app development. Per the freelance platform Upwork, it costs between $15 to $30 per hour to hire a developer.
• 82 percent of companies have a hard time attracting the software engineers and developers they need to hire to achieve digital transformation goals.
• Lack of collaboration between business departments and IT is one of the leading challenges that affect app development. Up to 75 percent of executives believe competition between business functions and digital projects is one of the top hindrances to growth.

The rise of low-code/no-code platforms: The new approach to app development

• Low-code development is one of the most popular trends right now. By 2025, 450 million out of the 500 million cloud-native apps will be built with low-code.
• Gartner says that by 2025, up to 70 percent of new enterprise applications will be built using low-code and no-code development platforms. This represents a significant increase considering less than 25 percent of companies used low-code platforms before 2020.
• The low-code development market is expected to reach a projected revenue of about $187 billion by 2030. With a cumulative average growth rate of 31.1 percent between 2020 to 2030.
• Low-code development is enjoying support even from traditional developers. Up to 41 percent of developers interviewed in a survey want their organization’s app development to be handled using no-code and low-code technology.

Decentralized app development with citizen developers

• Currently, about 60 percent of all custom apps in enterprises are built by non-IT employees. Citizen developers build 30 percent of these. These are employees with limited or no technical app development skills.
• Up to 80 percent of enterprise apps and software that organizations will use will be built by employees outside the traditional IT department. This revolution will be driven by the growing adoption of citizen development powered by no-code development platforms.
• About 82 percent of organizations think citizen development is becoming an increasingly important trend.
• According to a study by Gartner, the number of active citizen developers in large enterprises will exceed professional developers by up to 4 times by the end of 2023.
• 41 percent of organizations already have a citizen development program, and up to 20 percent of those yet to start are already considering it.

Enterprise business benefits

• According to a survey by McKinsey, organizations that democratize app development by empowering citizen developers score about 33 percent higher on innovation score than organizations that still stick to traditional development.
• The average company can reduce development time by 50-90 percent by adopting low-code and no-code solutions.
• A survey of 500 SaaS and product employees found that 85 percent believe adopting low-code solutions will add value to their lives. This can potentially boost job satisfaction and overall productivity.
• With a no-code/low-code development approach, developers can build cloud-native apps up to 10 times faster than traditional coding while using up to 70 percent fewer resources.

The state of application development in 2024 and beyond

• Statista projects that the enterprise software development market will generate revenue of up to US$271.80 billion in 2023, growing to about US$376.40 billion by 2028
• Artificial Intelligence has been one of the biggest trends in recent years, and it will significantly affect the application development industry in the coming years. Up to 83 percent of business executives consider AI a strategic priority for their organization.
• The IoT market is also expected to grow significantly, projected to increase by about 18 percent in 2023.
• Cloud-native development will also see significant growth in the coming years. Gartner predicts that organizations will deploy 95 percent of their apps on cloud-native platforms by 2025.

Conclusion

Low-code development is obviously beneficial for businesses as it helps close the skills gap and achieve digital transformation quickly and more efficiently by leveraging citizen development.

But the benefits of low-code application development can only be harnessed effectively when you use the right application development platform.
As low-code development becomes even more crucial in the future, it is in your best interest to choose a low-code platform that helps you build modern business applications quickly and intuitively and offers robust features for application deployment and management. Check out Kissflow today and schedule a demo to get started.

FAQs

What do the most significant app development statistics reveal about enterprise software demand?

Enterprise software demand has consistently outpaced IT delivery capacity for years across organizations of all sizes. Research from multiple analyst firms indicates that most large organizations carry application backlogs measured in months to years, with demand for new business applications growing faster than traditional development can accommodate. The rise of low-code platforms has been directly correlated with attempts to close this gap—Gartner projects that low-code will account for the majority of new enterprise application delivery within a few years as adoption scales beyond pilot programs to portfolio-wide implementation.

What statistics support the business case for low-code application development?

Studies across enterprise low-code adopters consistently show delivery acceleration of 50 to 70 percent compared to traditional development for equivalent application types. Total development cost reductions of 30 to 50 percent are commonly reported when comparing low-code delivery to equivalent custom development projects. Organizations using low-code platforms report higher developer satisfaction because less time is spent on repetitive infrastructure code. Citizen development programs built on low-code platforms typically deliver measurable ROI within the first twelve months of formal program operation.

What trends do current statistics reveal about mobile and cloud application adoption in enterprise?

Mobile application usage in enterprise environments has grown significantly as employees expect the same quality of mobile experience for work applications that they have for consumer applications in their personal lives. Cloud deployment has become the standard for new enterprise applications—the majority of new business applications are now cloud-hosted rather than deployed on-premises. Hybrid work has accelerated both trends, with organizations needing applications that work consistently across office, home, and field environments on multiple device types without requiring separate native applications for each platform.

What do development team productivity statistics show about modern software delivery approaches?

Development team productivity data consistently shows that time spent on non-differentiated infrastructure work—authentication systems, database operations, deployment pipelines, UI scaffolding—consumes a significant portion of developer time in traditional development cycles. This is a core reason low-code platforms improve productivity: they handle the infrastructure so developers focus on business logic. DevOps practices including CI/CD automation have also shown measurable productivity improvements by reducing the manual coordination effort historically associated with testing and production deployment.

What statistics exist around the cost of application security failures?

Security statistics make a compelling case for investment in development security practices. The majority of enterprise data breaches involve web application vulnerabilities. The cost of remediating a security vulnerability found in production is significantly higher than fixing the same vulnerability during development—industry estimates put the ratio at roughly thirty times higher. Post-launch defects cost significantly more to fix than defects caught during active development testing. These statistics are the empirical foundation for shift-left security practices and for sustained investment in thorough pre-launch testing even when it adds time and cost to the project.