UK Mobile App Strategy 2026: 5 Key Trends Driving Business Growth

As we see it, mobile apps are primarily meant to help us carry out our daily chores. 

Payments. Messages. Notifications. And so on. Never for running a business.

In the UK, however, apps are being calibrated to shoulder greater business responsibilities. Employees collaborate, customers interact, and machines are being controlled through mobile apps.

This shift is being driven by five key tech forces: predictive AI that anticipates user behaviour, AR that replaces manual instructions with vision, low-code that turns staff into builders, 5G that links apps to machines for real-time updates, and security that turns trust into revenue.

Together, these trends are redefining what “mobile strategy” means for UK businesses across sectors, from telecoms and manufacturing to retail, logistics, and public services. For customized apps, GoodFirms lists industry-specific mobile app developers with experience across domains from healthcare to retail. 

Rather than using mobile apps as a support system, leading organisations are now designing businesses around mobile intelligence. The question in 2026 is no longer whether your company owns a mobile app. But whether your mobile app can think, guide, build, control, and protect.

Let’s look at the five trends driving this shift.

Trend 1. AI in UK Mobile Apps: AI-Integrated Apps that Predict, Not React

AI in mobile would no longer be about automation. It would be about turning mobile devices into intuitive companions that anticipate and adapt to our unique needs. 

According to a McKinsey study, "Next best experience: How AI can power every customer interaction," to offer a next-level AI experience, organizations should incorporate AI-powered predictive models into apps to anticipate customer behavior and suggest the best course of action for the business. 

These models fall into three groups:

1. Propensity models predict whether a customer will churn, upgrade, or respond to a campaign.
2. Channel models predict which communication method will work best with emails, SMS, in-app messages, or calls.
3. Value models calculate how much revenue a customer could bring, now and over time.

The system relies on these predictions to take actions. For example, if a customer is on the verge of leaving, the system stops sending them sales ads cold turkey and instead sends them a special discount or help message.

If a customer appears happy and most likely to buy more, the system sends them an offer to upgrade. With predictive AI models covering the entire customer life cycle, companies can craft experiences that enhance customer satisfaction by 15 to 20%, boost revenue by 5 to 8%, and reduce the cost to serve by 20 to 30%. 

Case Study: BT Group + ServiceNow Now Assist AI

BT Group, one of the UK’s largest telecommunications companies, collaborated with ServiceNow to bring an AI-powered predictive intelligence into mobile apps for its frontline employees and support staff.

According to a ServiceNow press release, BT Group used Now Assist’s AI-powered case summarisation features that:

• Reduced the time agents spend understanding and writing case summaries by ~55%
• Improved agent handoffs (when new agents take over) by cutting the time to review complex notes by 55%
• Helped improve the mean time to resolve support issues by roughly one-third
  by streamlining workflows and automating repetitive administrative tasks 

Hena Jalil, Managing Director and Business CIO at BT Group, noted:

“Pairing ServiceNow’s platform with AI helped the company 'do things faster and smarter' and unlock greater value across customer journeys — demonstrating real operational benefit from AI-augmented automation rather than theoretical improvement." - Hena Jalil, Managing Director and Business CIO at BT Group

What this means for the UK mobile app strategy:

Mobile apps must be built as decision-support systems, not just as information screens. Instead of undertaking mundane tasks such as displaying tickets, mobile apps should help employees take the next best action and automate routine steps. Strategy shifts from being just a passive interface to a proactive system that improves efficiency and service quality.   

The UK has the third-largest AI market, after the US and China. This means it already has a perfect ecosystem for AI-driven mobile innovation. As AI advances, organizations should focus on developing secure, ethical AI that not only understands commands but also anticipates user needs. 

Trend 2. AR in UK Mobile Apps:  AR Integrated Apps that Replace Manuals with Vision

According to research, AR in the service industry helps employees better grasp an issue by visualizing it rather than reading conventional, text-heavy manuals. 

Employees in manufacturing industries complete tasks 44% faster when instructed via augmented reality devices than with a traditional paper manual. 

Besides speed, AR-based systems reduce error rates by 47% for tasks such as maintenance and assembly.  

According to the 2025 Field Service Benchmark Report, a shortage of skilled technicians in the service industry results in longer repair times and lower accuracy. However, using AI-powered service tools reduced repair times by 39% and 21% increased repair accuracy.

Case Study: Siemens Field Service (UK Operations)

Siemens uses AR applications to help UK engineers fix and maintain equipment using mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, or data glasses, rather than traditional manuals or laptops. The app shows 3D instructions and safety steps directly on top of real machines, making problems easier to understand at a glance. For UK industries like manufacturing, rail, and energy, this means faster repairs, fewer mistakes, and, yes, less downtime. 

AR apps show 3D instructions and safety steps directly on top of real machines, making problems easier to understand at a glance.

What this means for the UK mobile app strategy:

Mobile apps’ job has grown beyond document viewing into a visual work tool as well. Apps should be calibrated for camera-first workflows, real-world overlays, and guided task execution. Such expertise is built into the app interface, reducing the need for manuals and senior technicians.

Trend 3. LCNC in UK Mobile Apps: No Code that Turns Staff Into Builders 

App development is no longer the province of professional developers. The rise of low-code and no-code platforms is democratizing application development. This means that operations teams, domain experts, and even business users can build apps, workflows, and mobile experiences with little or no coding experience across UK organizations. And the industry is open to such experimentation because employees understand operational problems better than app developers do.   

According to Gartner’s forecast, 84% of organizations are already using low-code/no-code tools to speed up internal application delivery. And, in 2025, 70% of new apps were developed using low-code technologies, with 80% involving non-IT professionals or citizen developers. 

According to Kissflow’s CIO Low-Code Strategy Pulse Report 2025: 

• 86% of tech leaders have already adopted a low-code platform 
• 71% are using low-code platforms to build internal applications
• 57% tie low-code success to a reduction in app development costs

This shift is having a measurable business impact: According to redhat study, no-code and low-code platforms help reduce app development time by 90%. 

Practically speaking, retail and SaaS teams in the UK market can now quickly develop a CRM workflow or an inventory dashboard by engaging domain experts familiar with core processes. They can build, test, launch, and iterate quickly using no-code and low-code drag-and-drop interfaces. Besides LCNC tools, if your business is looking for other economical alternatives, cross-platform frameworks such as Flutter and React Native have proven effective. Choose Flutter developers or React Native developers listed on Goodfirms for a cost-effective cross-platform strategy. 

Case Study: Rolls-Royce: Empowering Citizen Developers

Rolls-Royce, the aerospace and defence titan, to achieve its digital targets,  turned its 1000 employees into 1000 citizen developers by adopting the low-code platform Microsoft Power Apps. The employees used the platform to build internal applications, ranging from employee recognition (Kudos) tools to analytics dashboards, without traditional coding experience, contributing to cost savings estimated at £8–£10 million, thus showing how mobile strategy in UK enterprises is shifting from IT-built to employee-built applications.

Talking about Rolls-Royce’s adoption of low-code/no-code technology, Stuart Hughes, chief digital and information officer at Rolls-Royce, revealed: 

“We sat down as a digital team, and we said, ‘With the number of people that we have, we’re never ever going to meet the business demand for digital transformation. So, we asked ourselves, ‘What could we do that would allow 1,000 people to save 10,000 pounds [around $12,800] each, but wouldn’t require a professional IT person?’ And we think it’s a good challenge to ask people—if everybody could save 10,000 pounds, there’d be a significant improvement in our financial performance.”  - Stuart Hughes, Chief Digital and Information officer at Rolls-Royce

What this means for the UK mobile app strategy:

With citizen builders being empowered to create and modify mobile apps themselves, this means faster feature delivery, better alignment with business processes, and internal ownership. App development companies, on the other hand, can focus on scalability, governance, and security.  

In short, the rise of citizen builder turns mobile strategy into a collaborative ecosystem where business experts and technologies will co-create solutions, ensuring faster roll-out and reduced reliance on specialist skills.

Trend 4: 5G and IOT in UK Mobile Apps: 5G that Links Apps to Physical Assets 

UK mobile networks are now fast and reliable enough for mobile apps to act as real-time control systems rather than just being simple viewing tools. 

According to Ofcom's 2025 Connected Nations report, UK users consume over 1.2 billion gigabytes each month of mobile data each month, an 18% annual rise, with 5G traffic growing by 53% year-on-year. The increase in data use can be directly related to 5G use.  

83% of the UK has access to 5G standalone (SA). 5G (SA and non-SA) coverage now reaches 94-97% of the UK. This positions the UK among the most advanced markets globally in transitioning from non-standalone to full 5G. 

As Ofcom’s Group Director for Infrastructure and Connectivity, Natalie Black, notes:

“The UK’s demand for data continues to grow as we live increasingly connected lives. For years, operators have been delivering 5G services while using old 4G networks to do most of the legwork. But now, the race to deliver the UK’s full 5G future is on.” - Natalie Black, Ofcom’s Group Director for Infrastructure and Connectivity

Case Study: Bosch Mobility Solutions 

Bosch’s IoT platforms (such as Track & Trace and its Logistics Operating System) show how UK manufacturers and logistics teams can use mobile dashboards to access real-time sensor data on asset location, status, and transport condition, improving fleet and container utilisation by 25% and reducing lost assets by over 50%—demonstrating how IOT-enabled applications enable use of live data to make faster and more informed operational decisions. 

What this means for the UK mobile app strategy:

Mobile apps are moving from monitoring tools to operational control systems. Strategies must support real-time data, live asset status, and remote system control. App design should shift from showing updates to continuous feedback loops (collect, analyze, and act on data), where decisions are made instantly from machine data.

Trend 5: Security in UK Mobile Apps: Security Features that Build Trust and ROI 

As UK businesses push more services and transactions onto mobile apps, security is no longer a backend concern. According to an IBM Security report, UK organisations cough up an average of £3.4 million for data breach incidents, with mobile endpoints increasingly on the radar as attack surfaces, as users tend to blend personal use, corporate access, and cloud credentials in a single device

Dubbed by security researchers as "mishing" – mobile targeted phishing –that exploits the small screen size, reduced URL visibility, and notification-driven behaviour of smartphone users. Zimperium's 2024 Global Mobile Threat Report found that 82% of phishing sites target mobile devices and increasingly adopt a mobile-first attack strategy.  

Cybercriminals have discovered that mobile devices are an ideal gateway to corporate networks and sensitive data, often carrying authentication tokens, corporate email, and app-based access to internal tools. Rather than attacking hardened data centres, they now target the weaker perimeter: unsecured mobile endpoints.

Case Study: Okta Mobile Identity

Okta’s Secure Sign-In Trends report reveals an increase in phishing-resistant authentication methods, such as multi-factor authentication, biometric, passwordless, and WebAuthn, which provide greater security while enabling faster, more reliable login experiences than password-based systems. This demonstrates that mobile authentication can improve both protection and usability at the same time

Multi-factor authentication can prevent up to 85% of account takeover attacks.  

What this means for the UK mobile app strategy:

Security should be part of the user experience, not just backend protection. A mobile strategy should combine frictionless access with assurance via biometrics, MFA, and passwordless authentication to build user trust. Trust directly affects logins, task completion, and transaction success, which makes security a revenue driver, not only a risk control feature. 

Conclusion

The future of mobile apps in the UK will be about how useful they are to businesses. AI in apps is helping people make better business decisions. AR helps them fix problems rather than just read about them. Low-code enables business teams to build their own apps. 5G connects apps to real machines and real-world data. And security gives people confidence to use it. 

In short, the UK mobile app strategy in 2026 is about how much real work your mobile apps can handle, speed up, reduce, remove, and improve. The winners in 2026 won’t be the companies with the most features. They’ll be the ones whose apps quietly help people do the right thing, faster.

In a UK economy shaped by AI, connected devices, and rising security risks, mobile is no longer just a screen. It’s part of the business itself.

UK Mobile App Strategies 2026 - FAQs 

1. What is a mobile app strategy for UK businesses in 2026?

The mobile app strategy for UK businesses in 2026 focuses on using apps as operational tools powered by AI, AR, low-code, 5G, and robust security. In addition to serving customers, they also run businesses. 

2. Why are UK companies turning mobile apps into control centres?

Modern tech and devices enable apps to connect directly with machines, workflows, and customer systems, helping mobiles move from being just an information screen to where work happens. 

3. Which UK industries benefit most from advanced mobile strategies?

Telecoms, manufacturing, retail, logistics, healthcare, and public services are benefiting the most, as these sectors rely on frontline staff, real-time data, and quick decision-making.

4. How do AI and low-code change mobile app development?

AI predicts actions and guides users; on the other hand, low-code helps business teams build internal apps without coding. Together, they speed up delivery and take the busywork out of IT teams. 

5. Is security more important than user experience in mobile apps?

No.  Modern mobile strategies should combine both. Biometric and passwordless login improve protection, in turn, making access faster and easier.