Why Mobile Apps are Super Lame

Suspicions are currently dotting around the internet that very soon, the mobile app industry will experience a severe dip in profits.

Despite the fact that mobile is the future, many are starting to believe that there are now already way too many apps on the market, and as it shows no sign of stopping, there will soon be way too many for smartphone users to handle. 

Digital Authority Partners has reported that the worldwide mobile app economy is expected to hit $6.3 trillion by 2021, and app revenue is expected to experience an uptick of 113 percent to reach $188 billion.

These figures seem to be against the drop of the app development industry, however, we believe that these figures simply will not work in real life.

So, if you’re thinking of developing a mobile app in the next 5 years, we really suggest that you read this first.

Here are x reasons why mobile apps are super lame. 

Apps are building an ecosystem

It’s expected that as time goes on and even the most niche of app ideas become over-crowded, we’ll start to see the creation of an app ecosystem. It’s already happening now: fast-food restaurants as big as McDonald’s choose to use apps such as UberEats rather than creating their own delivery service, and Indonesia now has the app Go-Jek, which works as the perfect all-in-one when it comes to food delivery, parcel sending, ordering shopping and even hiring house cleaners.

Third-party apps will soon start to link onto the bigger, most established development as time goes on, which is eventually expected to create a ‘King of Apps’. 

Not only will this hugely kill the choice of the consumer, but it will also stunt the development of anything new.

Everything that a smartphone user needs is predicted to soon all be under one roof, or app.

Consumers don’t want to be overhauled

Most people only have around 10 to 20 apps that they actually use on a daily basis. Let’s be honest here: we all have at least 3 apps on our smartphones each that we never actually use, or are too lazy to delete. 

Even the facts back this up, with 21% of downloaded apps worldwide are only once during the first 6 months of ownership, according to TechJury.

We’re all aware that too many apps simply slow down our phones, or stop them from working completely thanks to a lack of storage.

It’s also a fact that humans are creatures of habit, so it’s expected that as times goes on, we’ll stick more and more to the apps we trust the most.

If we’re honest, a lot of us already do this – not many of the 2.1 billion people who use Facebook every day are likely to be actively searching for and using a similar platform.

Mobile websites will probably take over

Developing a mobile app is a costly process, and is often an unnecessary expense. In a world where Google is everything, the likelihood is that anyone who wants to know anything will simply search for it online and hope for a good mobile website.

This is beneficial for not only saving your business a lot of cash in app development but also driving more traffic to your website to boost its Google ranking.

Not having a mobile app means that you also don’t have to mess around updating your app every time you update your website. 

Plus, it means much less fuss changing your content to be viewable on different phone devices, sizes, and browser formats.

And despite the fantastic healthcare startups in 2019, there are some things that an app simply isn’t made for. 

The online Prognos Registry holds 16 billion records for 185 million patients. This amount of data would not only be very hard for an app to handle but very hard for a team to develop, too.

Progressive webs apps are becoming popular

Linked to our previous point, it is likely that Progressive Web Apps will start to take over. In fact, the technology is already so impressive that it’s almost impossible to spot the visual differences between a PWA and any normal Apple Store or Play Store application.

However, the practical differences are much more noticeable. 

For a start, users don’t have to download PWA’s, meaning there are no long download times and the apps won’t take up storage on smartphones.

Content in progressive web apps is also easily reached via web browser making it much more convenient not only for customers, but the businesses creating them.

Developing a PWA as a business is a fantastic way to make life easier, as it’s much easier to update content, and app designs can simply be replicated from those made for the company’s browser site.

Progressive Web Apps are already showing big results, too. AliExpress saw a 104% increase in web conversions when it made the switch.

It also recorded that visitors were clicking on double the number of pages per session across all browsers.

People are getting lazier

Although it might not seem it, the process of actually downloading an app is too much effort for many of us.

It seems like a harsh statement, but for every consumer to get an app, they need to open the app store, search for the app, install it, wait for it to download, then open it and learn how to use it. Believe it not, but every step that you make a customer go through to get your app will actually make you lose 20% of them.

For an app to really make a solid landing in the market, people need to actually see value in downloading it. 

Users spend most of their time on the top apps through habit, as mentioned earlier, so it’s very unlikely for a brand new app to cause such a stir. 

For this exact reason, the majority of apps die off straight from launch.