Global Rapid Application Development Market - Growth, Trends, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The Global Rapid Application Development Market is anticipated to reach a CAGR of 42.8% during the forecast period (2022 - 2027). The market's growth is attributed to the advantages over other development models, such as requirements that can be changed at any time, encouraging and prioritizing customer feedback, and more.

Key Highlights

• The increasing developments, growing demand for applications integration, and rising need for microservices with robust application requirements are some of the major factors driving the studied market growth over the forecast period. Further, growing innovations across businesses and integrating advanced technologies in their business processes augment the demand for application development across industries.
• In May 2021, The software and digital engineering products company, Innominds launched its low-code platform for software development. With the market release of the platform, called iSymphony, Innominds joins the fast-growing low-code no-code movement for rapid application development (RAD). iSymphony provides a development environment to create application software through a graphical user interface and configuration instead of traditional hand-coded computer programming.
• According to DigitalOcean, 65% of founders in 2020 cite technical know-how around maintaining infrastructure as a top barrier to entry for new businesses. Handling everyday infrastructure tasks like provisioning and managing servers, operating systems, databases, application runtimes, and other dependencies, with the help of application platform solutions, enables enterprises to gain competitive advantages.
• Retail and Financial enterprises deliver the most engaging mobile application solutions with the help of rapid application development platforms. End users are adopting a range of mobile applications, from rich native mobile applications with iOS and Android device integrations to lightweight progressive web applications that don't require App Store downloads.
• RAD relies on rapid iteration and development. This requires advanced skills in the field. All parties involved must have equivalent and appropriate professional competence, and forming such a team could be difficult. Rapid application development works well with small, closely related teams. This is because this model requires effective collaboration. Further, this could be a challenge without experienced professionals in an organization.
• The COVID-19 outbreak has expanded the studied market scope, owing to the growing investment in digital applications across all industries. Industries that could have taken months and years to adopt digital and cloud technologies are now mainly relying on these for working efficiently. This is a further growing need for tools and platforms that streamline processes and eliminate time-consuming tasks. Hence, the demand for rapid application development platforms is expected to increase, as it is an application development model that places a heavy focus on speed, user strategy, and prototyping.

Key Market Trends

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises To Drive the Market Growth

• Small and Medium-sized Enterprises are likely to drive the market's growth due to their adoption of rapid application development platforms to develop customer-centric applications at lower costs and for better productivity.
• According to Soliant Consulting in October 2021, Rapid application development has recently become particularly popular among small businesses as the need for new solutions grows, as does the desire to build apps and deliver them to customers quickly. SMEs achieve great ROI with their RAD as the methodology divides technology development requirements into smaller chunks.
• SMEs are significantly contributing to the economy of most regions. According to the US Small Business Administration (SBA), more than 50% of Americans either own or work for a small business. SMBs also account for 40% of the country's GDP. Approximately 99% of all enterprises in the EU employ fewer than 250 persons.
• RAD is beneficial when SMEs need to deliver a product and update the features quickly and when necessary, as it can survive on smaller teams. According to a survey conducted by Maruti Techlabs in February 2021, frequent iterations are involved in this product development, ensuring quicker releases of the components and prototypes. As a result, users can measure project progress and see if it will be completed on time and if the overall development cost will be within budget.
• Small businesses need access to their data on the go, with no overhead costs for storage and hardware maintenance. Moreover, SMEs are looking for cloud-based RAD platforms to save money, time, and resources. This further boost the growth of the market.

Asia Pacific to Witness Highest Growth

• The increasing sophistication of technology, the growing presence of enterprises, the expansion of services, and the expansion of cloud-based service providers have all contributed to the tremendous growth of the APAC market region. Countries such as China, Japan, India, and Singapore have adopted the latest technology and continue to influence and expand rapid application development vendors.
• According to a survey conducted by ThirdRock Techkno in May 2022, rapid application development has become one of the world's most widely used development processes. This application development process is often the first choice for product developers as it ensures fast and smooth application development and helps developers achieve their development goals more efficiently. Also, according to the survey, 78% of companies are out of sync with their project requirements, and rapid application development helps minimize such challenges.
• According to NASSCOM, the Low-code/No-Code industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.1% from 2021 to 2025. The pandemic has changed how businesses operate, which is evident in India. This leads to significant investment, which could be a low-code application platform, a low-code data science platform, or a low-code cognitive platform. These platforms reduce time to market by 70%, are highly convenient for absorbing the ever-changing market needs, and lead the competition curve in India.
• Further, in October 2021, OutSystems announced the opening a new R&D center in Bangalore, India. The center will complement the capabilities of the company's global R&D centers in Portugal, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Spain. This center is the first research base for OutSystems in India as part of its efforts to facilitate efficient and rapid application development for business growth based on global and local markets in the swiftly growing digital era.
• Similarly, in January 2021, Mendix, a Siemens enterprise and provider of low-code application development for the enterprise, announced the intro of its world-class platform to the Chinese market. The Mendix low-code platform brings extensive advantages to Chinese enterprises seeking to accelerate their digital transformation and new methods of doing business that are accelerated by the global pandemic.

Competitive Landscape

The Global Rapid Application Development Market is moderately concentrated. Players in the market are launching new products, developing new technologies, and mergers & acquisitions to remain competitive. Some of the critical development in the market are:

• June 2021 - TrailheaDX, Salesforce introduced the next generation of Salesforce Platform that includes a robust set of low-code development tools that can empower users within an organization, regardless of technical skill or role, to create and ship apps on a single platform.
• March 2021 - Zoho released its new Creator platform. This all-in-one solution bridges the gap between business users and IT teams by delivering a low code and practical solution-building experience. With the recent release, the company aspires to empower IT teams and business users to build a more sophisticated, modern, and compliant solution. Zoho Creator is concentrating on becoming a low-code platform that is user-friendly, secure, and custom fit for solving various industry challenges.
• January 2021 - Oracle announced its popular APEX low-code development platform as a managed cloud service that designers can use to quickly and easily build data-driven business applications. Oracle APEX Application Development extends on two decades of APEX functionality already used by 500,000 developers as an easy-to-use, browser-based service for developing modern Web and mobile apps.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support