A recent study has found that people are installing and trying out fewer and fewer apps on average each month. In 2013, the average consumer downloaded and tried 2.32 new apps per month. So far in 2014, that number is down to 1.82. The study also found that people are increasingly less likely to spend money on apps, gravitating to the free ones whenever possible. The conclusion obliquely drawn by the study is that apps are dead. In this piece, we'll debunk that notion.
It Looks Dire
It's true that on the surface of it, the app market looks pretty dire. People really aren't trying out new apps with the same intensity that they did in previous years. It's also true that people are not as willing to spend money on apps as they once were. Given those two data points, one might be left to wonder what there is to refute, but those numbers don't tell the full story.
For one thing, there are a lot more people in the market today than in years past, so the falling average is not as important as you might think. After all, if a room filled with 100 people try 2.32 apps a month, then that's 232 apps tried. If 200 people try 1.82 apps, that's 364 apps tried. Still a higher number in the aggregate, even if each individual is trying fewer apps per month.
The same line of thinking holds true with the spending of money. If only 30% of 100 people are willing to shell out some money for an app, your market size is 30. If 25% of 200 people are willing, your market size is still larger at 50, and again, the raw numbers that the study cites don't tell that part of the story. That matters, because the number of handheld users has been growing explosively and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Why We Don't Want New Apps
Part of the reason for the reluctance to try new apps is comfort. Once a user has found an app that works for him for whatever purpose, there's little incentive to try a new app that does something similar. It's the old “if it ain't broke, don't fix it,” mentality at work, and there's something to be said for that. The existing apps that are popular are always refining their product, adding features that may have been introduced by smaller competitors, and rendering their take on the same idea irrelevant. That's okay, and in fact it's a sign of a healthy market.
Reports Of The Death Of Apps Are Greatly Exagerated
The long and the short of it is that the app market is maturing, but it is by no means dead. There's still plenty of innovation around, and plenty of room for growth. Granted, the market probably doesn't need another fart app, so if that's what you're dreaming up, you probably won't gain much ground. On the other hand, if you offer a new and innovative service, or do something better than the other apps on the market, such as the app called Humin did when it made its recent debut, then you'll find legions of fans eager to give you a try.
When the market was young, there weren't apps around that served as the de facto standard, so just about everything looked exciting, novel and interesting. Now we've grown more discerning. That's mostly what has changed, and it certainly doesn't mean that apps are dead or that the market is dying.
