In this modern day and age, it's undeniable that apps are everywhere. And the usage of mobile apps in people's day to day activities has increased drastically in the last decade. Today, there are apps that allow you to pay your bills, share a post in social media, or watch videos, all directly on your mobile device. So what's the common thread across these tasks? Well, they all involve the transfer of data. By the end of this video, you'll have a stronger understanding of why data matters in mobile apps. This includes knowing at a high level of how it is accessed, stored, and protected. The growth of the global mobile application market is so strong that it is anticipated to reach a value of more than $500 billion US by the year 2030. This makes sense as people use mobile apps across numerous facets of life including health, finances, entertainment, education, social media, and more. This means that you as a developer will be in demand as a mobile app developer, especially if you are a good one. Have you thought about all the work that goes into developing such applications which are used by millions worldwide? You may be aware that user interface is one aspect of it as people prefer mobile apps which are user friendly and intuitive. But another important aspect is data management. Managing, maintaining, and storing data is an important aspect of developing mobile applications. It comes from different places and takes various forms. Your app might hold local data within itself, or it may fetch data from servers or third party libraries, and then render it within the app. The data could also be stored in a database to which the app reads and writes data. As your mobile application grows, it helps to be more intentional about how your data is flowing within the app and how it is stored and managed efficiently. Once you have all this data in your application, then comes the topic of security. This could be sensitive data for your users and securing it would be crucial to a successful mobile app. Users want to be sure that their data is protected and cannot be tampered with when they are using a mobile app. For example, if you are logged into a banking application, you are trusting the app with sensitive data such as account numbers, usernames, passwords, and so on. Wouldn't you want to feel confident that this data is secure? When you work with data in mobile apps, you will interact with servers to fetch data. This could be done with REST APIs or GraphQL APIs. API is short for application programming interface. And API allows companies to open up their data and functionality to third party developers and business partners. For example, many social media websites provide APIs that allowed third party apps to upload photos and posts. As a mobile developer, you do not need to know the details of how the API is implemented. You will simply use the API to communicate with the service and read and write data that is applicable to your mobile app. A common use case for APIs is in a payment processing system. If you've used a shopping app, you may have encountered an option to pay through a third party service rather than entering your credit card details. This works through an API. It allows users to pay for products without exposing any sensitive information. You will simply make the necessary API calls to the third party payment processing server, which takes care of the rest. While developing mobile applications, it's important to utilize best practices for fetching data from APIs. You'll become more familiar with these practices as you progress through this course. This will include storing data and working with common data formats such as JSON. In addition, you will also interact with databases to store and retrieve data. Working with data is crucial to any mobile app and these skills have to be learned and mastered as a mobile developer. In this video, you've learned why managing and protecting data is important for the success of mobile apps. Next, you will learn about working with data in iOS apps. Let's get the journey started.
