While creating apps with a mass-market appeal is good (such as apps for organizing files or creating action lists), few companies are thinking about the evolution of apps and what the next generation of apps will be. So what exactly will tomorrow’s apps look like? The natural progression will be for apps to be enterprise level. In other words, there will need to be apps for purchasing, for logistics, for supply chain management, for lead generation, for patient care, etc. Tomorrow’s apps will be like having a virtual assistant by your side. These apps won’t just make you more productive with your work; they’ll actually do some of the work for you. For example, in the medical field, we’ll see apps for disease management, for patient records, and for remote diagnostics. The app will be more like an essential tool to perform a specific function rather than an ancillary item.

Aside from the app itself, the future of apps is also about where that app will be used. Currently, we think of apps as being only for Smart Phones. But part of the future is to have apps for the Smart Pads such as the new iPad.

Some Smart Phone apps are compatible with Smart Pads. But even those companies aren’t thinking big enough…both literally and figuratively. Since the Smart Pads have bigger screens and more processing power, why should they do the same thing as the phone app? Why not take advantage of that extra space and power and come up with a new class of apps that can do things the phone apps can’t? These are key questions companies must think about and address if they want to be serious players in the future app market.

But that’s just the beginning. The next evolution is apps for the Television. Today’s newer televisions are Internet enabled. (And, by the way, all our devices will be internet enabled one day.) That means the processor and the television browser are built into the TV set so you don’t have to plug a computer into your television; the TV is the computer.

This will make Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV really take off. It’s essentially TV over the internet versus on cable and satellite. In fact, many Millennials use IPTV to watch TV rather than cable or satellite. Knowing this, it’s only logical that we’ll also need television level apps. However, now you have even more visual real estate and broader bandwidth connection. Many new TVs are also 3D equipped, meaning that your apps could be 3D too. As you can see, in the app world, this is another game changer. Smart companies need to stay ahead of this evolution and create their apps accordingly.