Mobile development in 2026: creating iOS and Android applications

The mobile app market continues to grow rapidly in 2026. According to Appfigures, the number of new programs on Google Play and the App Store increased by 60% in the first quarter.

Instead of the expected decline in interest in mobile services due to the development of AI, the market has had the opposite effect: artificial intelligence has simplified the creation of applications and accelerated the launch of new digital products.

For businesses, a mobile product is a tool for sales, service, analytics, and audience retention. 

In this article, we will look at how things are going in the mobile development market, which technologies and approaches are becoming key in 2026, and what needs to be considered when creating iOS and Android applications.

In the report above, you can see that Android provides maximum audience reach, especially in Russia and the CIS. iOS provides access to a paying audience with a higher LTV (lifetime customer value).

When is it enough to develop a mobile application for one platform?

Launching only on Android is justified if the product is aimed at a mass audience in the CIS countries and at the same time the budget for the launch is limited.

iOS-only development is appropriate in the case of premium products: fintech services, luxury online commerce, B2B SaaS solutions, and other areas with a high average check and a paying audience.

Mobile traffic has already exceeded desktop traffic and accounts for over 55% versus 42%, and according to Statista forecasts, by 2027 the smartphone audience will reach almost 7.7 billion people. For a business, this means one thing: the audience is already there, and the only question is how conveniently they can interact with your product.

The mobile application is a strategic asset of the business

The business gets direct, personal and permanent access to its audience: through push notifications with exclusive offers, through a simplified way to purchase without re-authorization, through loyalty programs available only to users of the program. 

For example, the Dodo Pizza app provides 40% of all sales and 65% of delivery revenue, outstripping physical restaurants in terms of turnover.

 

Mobile Development Tasks	What does this give the business?
Constant contact with the audience	Push notifications ensure regular communication without additional advertising costs.
A simplified way to purchase	Saved user data reduces the number of steps before ordering
Increasing loyalty	Personal promotions and special offers for system users only
Optimization of internal processes	Manage products, schedules, price tags, and acceptance without wasting time.
Collecting analytics	Demographic data, behavior within the platform, popular positions are the basis for marketing
Reputation and recognition	The product launch itself becomes an information guide for promotion in other channels.

AI integration into mobile platforms

Users expect the product to adapt to them: anticipate requests, make relevant recommendations, and respond instantly.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning permeate all levels of the application, from the user interface to internal development processes. At the product level, these are personalized recommendations, predictive search, chatbots and voice assistants, automatic translation and speech recognition. Connecting LLM models via APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, YandexGPT) allows you to embed intelligent functions without building your own ML infrastructure from scratch.

AR and VR open up a new level of interaction with content: product fitting, interactive instructions, educational simulations.

Gamification is the introduction of game mechanics into non—game scenarios: scores, levels, challenges, counters. This is one of the most affordable ways to increase audience engagement and retention without drastically changing the core product.

The cost and timing of developing applications for mobile devices in 2026

The price of a mobile app depends on the complexity of the project, the number of screens, integrations, user roles, and the required workload. The cost is also affected by the chosen technology: native development can be more expensive due to the creation of separate systems for iOS and Android, and the cross-platform approach reduces the budget.

In LighTech, the price of mobile development starts from 1 million rubles. The average team rate is from 2000 ₽/hour, and the minimum project launch time is from 3-4 months (the cost is current at the time of publication of the article).

Creating an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is the launch of the first working version of a product with basic functionality to test a hypothesis and receive feedback from users. This way, you can accelerate market entry, test demand without large investments, and further develop the product based on the data obtained.

ASO: optimization for search in stores

App Store Optimization for mobile products is the same as SEO for a website. Basic checklist:

• An icon with high contrast and readability in sizes from 29 to 1024 pixels.
• Screenshots with descriptive captions — the first two screens determine 90% of the installation conversion.
• Video review — increases conversion by 20-35%.
• Title and description with targeted search queries. In the App Store, keywords are displayed in a separate field (100 characters).
• Regular A/B testing of icons and screenshots through Product Page Optimization (App Store) and Store Listing Experiments (Google Play).