What Type of Mobile Apps are Profitable to Develop

The latest pandemic has tremendously boosted the mobile app market. Users, isolated in their homes, resorted to apps to do everything: study, order food, work, have fun, watch movies, or do anything else. Sooner or later, this situation had to come to a logical conclusion.

App demands, being so high amidst pandemic restrictive measures, have clearly gone into decline. However, that is just a rebound from the explosive growth of the past two years. Moreover, if you take an average revenue growth rate like CAGR, you will find that the mobile app market is ahead of pre-pandemic forecasts even with the current recession and sets new records time and again. The market still promises plenty of opportunities, allowing you to develop and promote your product.

This article will show our opinion on which mobile app niches will generate the highest revenue in 2023.

Dating Applications

Socializing, dating, and finding your love are among the fastest-growing categories. A study conducted by Data.ai shows that dating apps were third only to “short videos” and “entertainment” categories in terms of growth rates.

Tinder and Bumble are among the top-grossing and top-10 most downloaded apps in virtually every market.

Pros:

• People were missing dating and socializing. 2022 showed usage growth by dozens of percent.
• Users are accustomed to the subscription model.
• Plenty of niche opportunities for growth.

Cons:

• Strong competition.
• Complicated paid user attraction: the cost of acquiring a single paid user can reach hundreds of dollars.

Educational Applications

Despite the slowed-down economic growth throughout the world, apps in the educational niche are gaining pace and periodically setting new records. In the third quarter, the total income of educational apps reached a record mark of $220 million in Europe and is also constantly growing in the US.

Pros:

• Users want to learn and are accustomed to doing it in a mobile format.
• There are lots of sub-niches like language learning, educational tools and games, and school communication platforms.

Cons:

• Difficulties with professional educational content creation.
• Strong competition.

Healthcare & Wellness Apps

Body care, healthcare, and wellness belong to a category that, you might say, collapsed in downloads after the pandemic and lockdowns were over. However, as we have already written, this is just a rollback to regular indicators.

There is a paradox though: when downloads drop, the income in the category still increases. For instance, apps like Calm and Headspace experienced a fourfold reduction in installs from their peaks in early 2021 but doubled their incomes over the same period.

This means that users see viable benefits of such apps and are willing to pay developers for them.

Pros:

• Smartphones and smartwatches continuously generate more health monitoring data.
• A growing number of available technologies, primarily AI, help to obtain valuable insights.
• “Health” is not just a medical category. It also presumes diet routines, wellness, exercise, and many other subcategories you can try your hand at.

Cons:

• Personal healthcare data requires special handling.
• The paying audience is amassed in Tier 1 markets, so scaling is problematic.

Augmented Reality Apps

Augmented reality (AR) continues to gain popularity. A growing number of companies are launching products based on this technology. For instance, IKEA has introduced its mobile app, IKEA Place, allowing you to arrange furniture in a virtual 3D apartment environment and find out what it will look like.

Background editing technologies and even face-replacing algorithms for video clips are also actively spreading and improving. A variety of apps allowing users to place animated 3D models in a real environment have also appeared on the market. Using this technology, companies can create attractive videos featuring their products.

Available and rapidly developing AR technologies combined with the users’ imaginative capabilities will soon allow common authors to create quality video clips capable of competing with their studio counterparts. Content creation actively becomes democratized, and new augmented reality developments will strengthen this trend.

The mobile market still holds a lot of growth opportunities. Users are ready to accept various products offered to them. The main thing is to formulate the value correctly and develop it into a functional mobile app.

If any of these niches inspire you to develop your own mobile app, you can contact us to ask for development services. Our team of experienced professionals will do everything possible to provide you with a quality result that will exceed your expectations.