A Detailed Overview- Timeline of Mobile App Development in 2025

The market is expanding and businesses seek advanced solutions to deliver the best user experience possible in 2024. Understanding the Mobile App Development Timeline can help optimize processes, reduce development time, and cut costs, ensuring advanced solutions meet user expectations effectively.

But, the question that comes to every business owner’s mind is “How much does it take to launch an app in 2025?” remains constant.

However, there is no exact timeline that defines the mobile app development process, all we can do is estimate the time depending on several factors, and the type of app anyone wants to build. 

To understand the mobile app development timeline, here is a comprehensive breakdown of each development stage to help you define your process.

It is just an estimated time that generally takes to develop a mobile app. However, this time estimation changes depending on the type of app, features, and teal you want to engage.

With the growing mobile app market, staying ahead requires a well-planned app development timeline.

Let us understand what is required for an optimized mobile app development.

A Roadmap to Mobile App Development Process

A mobile app development process involves several steps from gathering information, and market analysis to developing, deploying, and supporting the app.

Each phase requires time to complete and test. Here are the key phases of a streamlined mobile app development process.

Phase 1- Market and Competitor Research (1-2 weeks)

First, you must understand the goal of your app. It will help you gather the right market information and analyze the performance of your competitors.

Before, start developing, understanding the target audience is necessary as it will help you improve existing solutions in the market. The market research takes around 1-2 weeks, depending on the industry and market growth. 

Before jumping to the development phase, businesses must be sure about-

• The goal of your mobile app
• The target audience and segments
• What type of mobile app development platform you want to target (Android, iOS, or cross-platform)
• What project management approach you will choose
• What are the pain points of existing solutions and how you can improve it
• What does your audience think of a product or service similar to yours?

You can choose AI-powered market research solutions to fast-track your research. 

Phase 2- UI/UX Design Phase (2-3 weeks)

This phase is the ideation phase, where the designing team comes up with their creativity about how the app should look.

They create MVPs or prototypes to help the business understand the basic functioning and features of the mobile app. In this phase, designers create the entire UX/UI for the client’s feedback and improve as per the requirements.

This phase includes-

• Designing UI
• Including basic features and functionalities
• Follow a User-centric and agile approach for better development
• Ensure the design helps resolve the audience’s pain points and aligns with the app’s goal

Phase 3- Mobile App Architecture (1 week)

This step involves deciding the tech stack, frameworks, and other critical tools to build up the app’s architecture. It helps businesses to identify the latest trends and which technology will help them build advanced solutions to stay ahead.

From choosing the right and cost-effective tech stack and technologies, developers will also identify the right approach to start the development. 

This step is crucial as it also decides the compatibility and integration of your app with other third-party applications and tools for high-end functionality. This phase takes around 1 week and includes-

• Defining technical requirements
• Choosing the right scalable and robust database
• Selecting tech stack to create a detailed app design.

Phase 4- Mobile App Development 

This phase is all about converting ideas into reality with dedicated and custom app development. The design and architecture will start converting into results. This is the most time-consuming part of the process. It includes-

• Front-end development (4-6 weeks)

The team focuses on building the part of the app that users see and interact with. They use relevant coding languages to design the app’s layout.

This phase is about making sure the app looks good and is easy to use. It typically takes 4 to 6 weeks to finish the most important features at this stage.

• Backend development (5-7 weeks)

Backend development usually takes about 5 to 7 weeks. This part of the process involves setting up the server and database to send the right data to the app.

For example, it ensures product details or vehicle options show up correctly in an app. The server holds important information, like product lists or user accounts, and makes sure it’s available when needed.

Phase 5- Testing

After development, the app goes through testing. Testing happens while the app is being developed to catch and fix problems quickly. The main purpose is to make sure the app works correctly and meets the original plan.

There are different types of testing:

• Integration testing to check if the app’s parts work well together.
• Functional testing to check if the app does what is expected.
• Unit testing will check each unit of the app, to see if each component is working fine.
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is about checking the app for user’s acceptance. It checks if the app is working fine for all users, offering a great user experience.
• Performance testing to check how fast and well the app runs.

Testing usually takes about a week, but it can take longer if the app is complicated. Fixing issues during testing may take time.

Phase 6- Launch and Support

If the app works fine, it is ready to launch across channels like the Google Play store and Apple Store. Make sure the app follows all the guidelines.

Once the app is launched, the work is not finished here. To stay in the competition, the app requires consistent support and maintenance to improve its visibility and performance. It is an ongoing process that has no timeline. 

These steps are lengthy and require expert mobile app developers who know the industry-best approaches to minimize the development time. Let’s hear from OnGraph’s experts to reduce the mobile app development time. 

Also, read- Why Partner With Custom Mobile App Development Company

Expert Tips to Reduce Mobile App Development Time

With our 15+ years of experience in web and mobile app development, we have optimized the timeline to deliver faster results.

Here are some tips from our experts.

1. Choose MVP Approach

When you make an app, you don’t always need to launch with all the features immediately. Instead, you can start with just the most basic features that are needed to work. This is called an MVP (Minimum Viable Product).

For example, WhatsApp started with just simple chat features. By launching early with the basic features, they could get feedback from users, improve the app, and add more features over time.

This approach helps you launch your app faster and make improvements based on what users want.

2. Create a Wireframe Blueprint

Low-fidelity wireframes are basic, simple sketches of how an app will look and work. It simplifies the development process by just focusing on the app’s layout and structure.

These wireframes are important for developers and designers to understand how the app will function and look across platforms.

It makes sure everyone working on the app understands the plan and can stay focused on the same goal.

3. Automated Testing

Choosing automated testing will help you fast-track your mobile app testing process.

You can choose a reliable testing tool and framework that comes with the facility to automate test creation and implementation that reduces manual efforts and errors, improving the app’s performance.

It helps developers and testers to focus on more important tasks that require their immediate actions.

4. Choose a Hybrid Mobile App Development

The hybrid app development approach helps develop mobile apps across platforms with a single codebase.

Developers can choose tools like Xamarin, Flutter, React Native, and Ionic to write just one version of the app that works on both iPhone and Android.

Using these tools saves time because you don’t need to create two separate app versions for different systems. This helps you build the app faster and get it to users more quickly.

Do you know what is another way of entering into your niche market in just 2 days?- White-label mobile app solutions.

Connect with a leading white-label mobile app development company to kickstart your business in very little time while ensuring a seamless user experience. 

Start Your Mobile App Development Journey with OnGraph

With 15+ years of experience in mobile app development, OnGraph is making strides globally with its optimized delivery.

Our expert developers follow a user-centric and agile approach to fast-track the development process, without impacting the quality and performance of the app.

Connect with us to learn more about our approach to delivering the best product in the market. From seamless market research to hassle-free deployment, OnGrah covers everything. 

Bring us your business proposition, we will help you turn it into an amazing reality and app.