Many developers will remember 2021 as one of the most stressful periods in their careers. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic software technology trends have drastically changed their direction for products aimed at leveraging remote communication and e-commerce.
However, those segments are not the only fields where IT companies are going to increase their activities. Below you can find the 11 technology trends in the software industry that are expected to emerge in 2022.
1. Video Games
Following the Video Game Software Global Market Report 2020-30 published for the first time in Dublin, rapid progress is expected in this industry. The document claims that the total capitalization of the market of software for video games is in decline due to the pandemic along with the subsequent economic crisis. While it was evaluated as $167.2 billion in 2019, the evaluation dropped to $166.4 billion in 2020.
Regardless, the gaming sector is forecasted to grow in the coming year appearing one of the trends in the software industry. The next year should provide the developers with quick recovery. The growth of the market of software for video games and related products is expected to reach $223.2 billion by 2023. It will obviously become one of the new trends in software development.
2. E-commerce: the Most Popular Technology For Software Development
Retail purchases via the internet keep gaining momentum. The sale volume in this sector was estimated at $1.3 trillion in 2014 while in 2020 the volume reached $4.9 trillion according to Statista. So, the market has roughly quadrupled over seven years.

Such growth impacts the developers of software for e-commerce as well. It can be safely assumed that the development of applications for online services will appear among the top trends in software development in 2022. All the more so because the share of ecommerce sales will reach 17.5% of the global retail volume in 2021 according to Statista.
Read Also: How to build an E-commerce app
3. Bionics For Human Body
In his review for Forbes magazine, Aleksey Makarov states that the coming year will bring many new developments dedicated to the enhancement of the human body. He cited the example of Google Glass technology. The technology trends in engineering keep moving forward.
These days, Human 2.0 technologies are used mainly for the restoration of lost capabilities (hearing, vision, etc). In the future, the technologies will be used not just to recover human organisms, but to improve their capabilities. This might include the following use cases:
- Bionic exoskeletons (which are under active development by military entities);
- Improving natural capabilities (hearing, vision, physical strength);
- Cheep implants enabling the operation of gadgets and devices
Considering such a segment in the “software trends and future” context, the above cases seem the most prospective. Technology-based human betterment is gaining popularity among developers. Notably, many enterprises have already put the bionic exoskeletons into operation while the US army has been testing them actively.
4. Native Apps
The same Aleksey Makarov insists that native applications will be one of the main software development trends next year. In 2020, it became clear that some minimal contact between buyers and sellers was in demand. That’s why it is forecasted that more and more companies will create their native applications for both the communication with customers and inner coordination. This trend is expected to cover banking, multimedia, and e-commerce.
The three sectors need to have stable secure and convenient applications for making deals with the clients. Even if the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic settles down, the demand for a fast and comfortable way of communication with customers will remain.
The experience of large companies such as Google prioritizes mobile apps and mobile communication channels. This is partly because the number of devices with Android OS reached almost 2.5 billion throughout the world in 2019. Even without taking into account the number of iOS devices, that figure encourages mobile app developers badly. The native apps will continue to be one of the trends in the software industry.
Read Also: Eternal Battle: Native vs. Cross-Platform
5. Voice Commerce
Voice commerce is one of the latest IT trends in the software industry. This is quite a new technology that allows carrying out actions through voice commands. Leading digital giants such as Google and Amazon have already approached that technology.
The users can do what they need via applying voice control without touching their devices. It is enough to tell the system what to do while not being distracted by the manual process. The technology is gaining popularity due to better time management resulted from an ability to control the system on the go.
This domain holds the promise of new trends in software technology. It is expected $40 billion to be brought by voice commerce to consumers in the USA alone by the end of 2020. The figure can be bigger in 2022 because both Google and Amazon keep improving the technology in their niches.

Read Also: Future of Commerce with the Development of Mobile Commerce Applications
6. Big Data is Still Promising
In his review for Forbes magazine, Aleksey Makarov is especially focused on the segment of Big Data. The development of the systems for Big Data processing will be among the latest trends in the IT industry. The expert stays that the largest share will belong to the tools capable of processing everything in the memory without saving the results after each calculation. He supposes that the package processing of frameworks will be popular in the following fields:
- Social media
- Processing of documents
- Text analysis
- Media streams
- Climate research
- Explorations on medical treatment
At the same time, cybersecurity is highlighted as the main problem in the Big Data segment. It can impede the implementation of new tools. If the problem is solved with the latest technology in software development, the state of Big Data can be strengthened.
The technology has been developing rapidly over the last decade. Analysts attach great priority to it among other information technologies. Great opportunities to work with Big Data will appear in 2022.
7. Cloud Technologies
Cloud technologies will remain a trend in the coming year. According to ITPortal, the global pandemic leveraged the interest of using clouds for processing and storage of data. The experts suppose the majority of important processes are run in clouds today. So, the business will be interested in this technology to an even greater extent.
Growth in the use of clouds is to be observed over the next few years. Companies will be developing their own software. Supposedly all the processes will be optimized for better efficiency. More and more IT companies will be focused on this segment to satisfy the market.
Benefits from using such type of software:
- Lower costs of new projects
- Greater productivity of the development process
- Decreased expenditures on project maintenance
That’s why clouds will remain among software technology trends in the following years.
8. Open Source
Many developers release their open-source software in the public domain. Therefore, a lot of people can get free access to new computer programs that become an alternative to commercial software. This is particularly true for those who use to work from home having no corporate accounts. In the context of the ongoing pandemic, the segment will remain quite popular in the next year.
In many instances, open-source software is more secure than commercial analogs. Experts suppose the segment will keep growing to stay among other software development trends. It can impact the general condition of the IT industry since a significant part of the market belongs to open source.
9. Chatbot Development
This domain can be called the most popular among new trends in software development. Chatbots accelerate communication between parties. At the same time, the embedded automatic processing of the clients’ queries allows saving costs on operators and other staff. Social networks such as Facebook, Telegram, Viber, and Skype use chatbots actively today.
According to the study, 58% of chatbots work in the B2B segment while the rest 42% work in the B2C one.

It is not surprising that the software development companies are the most active ones who implement chatbots into their platforms. They have 65.1% of the total market share. They are followed by special services and healthcare companies.

10. Virtual Reality
This is the most promising avenue for the entertainment industry. VR allows appearing in a virtual space with full presence. This is what attracts the consumers of VR products. It is worth considering the videogame Half-Life: Alyx as the most expensive VR project.
Despite the total number of VR devices is relatively small (about 5 million), the sales of that game reached 800 thousand copies at the end of the first week. Hence, Half-Life: Alyx appeared at number eight in Top Grossing Titles.

The development of more affordable VR solutions seems very prospective for this segment. It can be safely assumed that VR can become the most popular technology for software development in the videogames’ market.
11. Cloud Gaming
Games for PCs and consoles are becoming more demanding year after year. That’s why cloud gaming enters the world market. There is no need in buying expensive components for upgrading PCs to play the newest games any longer. Good bandwidth along with a data streaming system is enough.
Analysts from Newzoo state that up to 125 million people will start using cloud gaming in a couple of years. Google, Sony, and other giants draw their attention to this sector.

Basing on such forecasts of the experts it seems reasonable that cloud gaming will open up new markets in 2022. So, the demand for the development of new software will grow accordingly. As a result, cloud gaming will appear in the list of actual trends in the software industry.
Summary
In addition to uniformity, omnichannel support is in demand today. In its essence, it comes to the synchronization of all activities at various platforms. The bigger number of activities is executed by a company the more advantageous the control over all processes through a single history of changes will be.