A few months ago I might have agreed with you. However given the growing power of React Native and the recent announcement of Android Instant Apps, I think there is going to be a surge in app "downloads".
...and are way, way more limited in terms of leveraging device functionality.
I'm not hating on mobile-optimized web apps, just making the point that they aren't a one-size fits all solution, and as such, I don't think a blanket statement like "Progressive Web Apps make way more sense" really works.
There are only a few apps that leverage device functionality e.g. gyrometer, fingerprint, etc. Even location and camera are now available for web apps. So for a majority of native apps a web app makes more sense.
Fingerprint sensor for authentication is a big hole. Mint integrates with TouchID, and it's great. But my bank's webview-wrapping "app" requires a login and password every launch, and it's very annoying.
Except is much easier to build nice app with native SDK instead of dancing shamanic dances around web tech which was never intended for the apps in the first place.
If people advocating web apps would spend just a half of that time educating themselves what's really offered by SDKs…
"much easier" is very relative. Someone proficient in web dev technologies isn't necessarily going to find Objective C development or Android Development much easier. If you want to see an example of a nice web app try www.hoteltonight.com from your phone's browser.
Your definition of "device functionality" is pretty different from mine then - consider local storage on a device. Many enterprise applications can end up storing massive amounts of data on devices; that data often needs to be encrypted. Not gonna fly with a web app.
Web apps don't support push notifications on devices. Again, a hugely important example of extremely common device functionality.
Web apps require constant connectivity. Device goes into a tunnel, app quickly stops working. Or even more realistic, user drives 20km to the middle of nowhere, has no cell service, but still needs to do their job without worrying about web site connectivity.
And those are just the extremely common use cases. Again, I'm not hating on mobile-optimized web. There are many use cases where it makes perfect sense. But you really can't make a blanket statement like "So for a majority of native apps a web app makes more sense"; it's just not the case.
Enterprise applications are a different beast, especially if they are report heavy. Having said that HTML5 does have offline storage API albeit with a 5MB limit though support for it is up to the browser.
HTML5 also has Notifications API[1] which can be leveraged for push notifications on mobile devices.
I do not disagree that there are many use cases for using Apps especially in the Enterprise space but there are far too many consumer apps than enterprise ones so maybe I should change that statement to "a majority of native consumer apps" :)
Enterprise apps are a perfectly normal beast for mobile development, 5MB of local storage is a joke, and the notifications you're referring to are not true platform push notifications.
Do they make more sense? Mobile-accessible web applications just have different delivery method, they are otherwise pretty much just "apps" and the same forces are at work. If your flappy bird clone is HTML5 that doesn't make anyone more likely to find and use it.
Some of the iOS apps I use have been "updated" from native to something wrapping a web view, and the experience is noticeably worse. I hope you're mistaken.
I think the app boom is in decline, but I really don't see how illustrating lower growth for the 20 most well known apps demonstrates this. Less people downloading Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram? Account for how many people already have it! There could be a saturation of those very well-known apps.
There's a lot more to consider once you look at how the entire app market is changing, rather than just the very top.
Anecdotal, but I don't use an app for any service that offers substantially similar service on their website. For instance, Facebook and Amazon have horribly bloated apps. They run in the background and eat up my battery. Their apps ask for permissions for unfathomable reasons. I place a link to the website on my desktop instead, since I can at least trust my browser won't eat up all my battery after I thought I closed it.
While I'm more tech savvy than most people I know, a lot of my friends have uninstalled the Facebook app as well, for a variety of similar reasons. Several have noticed what a battery hog it is, others got pissed off when Facebook added the messenger app, and others did it for privacy reasons.
Interestingly, I've noticed I use Facebook a lot less since deleting the app. I should see how my friends usage trends compare. I wonder if the friends who deleted the app have noticed a decrease in their Facebook usage, or if all my friends have decreased their usage and it's just a function of us being older/in different stages of life.
I'm relentlessly unwilling to use banking or shopping apps for similar reasons. Not only are they bloated and wasteful, they're typically pretty opaque, with a totally unknown attack surface.
My bank is barely competent to use HTTPS with valid certificates - why on Earth would I chance using their new-and-untested app when I can't see if it's worse than their website?
For banks specifically.. I can use an app to deposit checks via picture. I cannot do this via the website. So of my 20 apps I have installed, something like 3 are banks, 10 are games, and 7 are utilities...
There is no need to keep your checking where you have loans. I've also had success with running my main "hub" checking account out of an internet-only bank, with an account at a local credit union I use more rarely, when I need to do something in person.
That was from 2010. Most banking apps on iOS use Touchid. If they are using TouchID, they have to store the passwords in Keychain which is encrypted. It's only after the user uses their password that the OS gives the app the stored password.
It's almost certainly correct that they use the Keychain for Touch ID. But I'd hedge that if they were bent on being insecure, they could use a different Touch ID mode that just returns a boolean. Does anyone know whether app review examines which mode they choose?
Same here. Deleted Facebook app long time ago. And now use their website every now and then. - Also the excitement of finding and trying out the latest and greatest apps are gone years ago.
But they really really want you to use their app! They're hungry for those permissions, which will give them more data and give them more chances to "engage" you! They're tired of the limits of the web as a platform, and excited for the limits of native! And that app is a whole feather or kingdom for someone who's really killing it and going places, because apps are How We Do Things Now. Or maybe that's bots.
Yeah it is one of those things that puzzle me. Everyone involved with finance to some degree or other seem to ignore, willfully or otherwise, that we live on a finite earth.
Meaning that there are only so many people on this planet, only so many of us have a smartphone, and only so many of them again will be interested in installing a certain app.
Meaning that sooner or later that growth curve will flatten out.
And apps are just one example, the pattern repeats across all markets.
I agree, it's not a great analysis, although top apps aren't a horrible proxy either, there's a lot of arguments missing from the article.
I do think it's somewhat likely though that top apps show similar trends as the rest of the apps. Saturation plays a role, but it's probably limited. Many of the top apps like say Facebook were likely to be on a very high percentage of smartphones 5 years ago, as they are today. Yet they used to grow faster than they do today, which indicates that there was significant growth in the number of actual smartphone users driving the growth of app installations. In short, not just market share but market size, too, and that latter factor affects apps regardless of popularity.
That raw smartphone user growth has dropped off significantly.
Let's not forget that smartphone sales have been linear for a while, not exponential, and in some cases (see Apple's latest results) even shrinking. And that's sales, which includes replacement units. If you actually look at new active smartphone users, by very definition that growth factor lies below sales growth. In rich economies (those where the ARPU is an order of magnitude greater than low-income regions where you're still seeing substantial new smartphone user growth, driving much of the app economy), the growth of new users is way down. Between 2010 and 2015 the US saw smartphone users triple, it's forecasted to only grow by a quarter from then on to 2019. And that plays a role for any app regardless of popularity.
What I do think is crucially missing from this article is that if you talk about the app economy, you can't just talk about user growth. The app economy is users * ARPU. That latter part is completely ignored, despite signals (particularly among the top apps they're analysing) that ARPU has grown quite substantially.
For example, Facebook grew its worldwide ARPU by roughly 30% in the year ending on Q4 2015, about 6 months ago. In the US it grew 50%. So even the raw smartphone growth figure I referenced to grow by about 25% in the US between 2015 and 2019, is blown out the water by a single year of FB revenue per user growth.
Here however I think there is a big difference between top and 'other' apps. Without any data, I'd guess that ARPU may actually be down for non-top apps, due to a flood of competitor's driving prices to zero, whereas top apps tend to get better at monetising their user base. I wouldn't be surprised if the app economy is more lopsided in terms of revenues than it was a few years ago.
App boom is definitely over, but not nearly as 'over' as user growth slowdown would suggest.
Right, which is totally understandable given that the app market has been going for about 8 years now. There's obviously a shift towards apps that provide more longer term and reoccurring value to customers which is great for consumers and for the businesses that build/ship these apps.
how can you say anything about a market when all you are looking at is the top 15 apps? Seems absurd. Maybe the bottom 50 pct have seen increased adoption? We don't know.
An extremely strong app market would actually produce the same results as a weak one for the top few products.
If people are eager to download apps, high-profile products like Instagram hit saturation quickly and a drop-off in downloads even though their user base is massive. If people are hesitant, they get some downloads and slow-but-steady growth. If people are unwilling, they don't get users at all (but we know what hasn't happened).
There's really no value for anyone else in a top-apps evaluation - the rest of the world isn't plastering Times Square in ads.
I am not in the loop for latest in Android development. Can someone, who is, comment towards whether they think the recently announced Android Instant Apps will reverse this trend significantly?
It should be a good thing. As is, there are lots of one-off use cases for apps where people simply choose to do without.
As an example, if I'm buying a product online (and not from Amazon), there's probably an app for the marketplace that's more mobile-friendly than the website. But right now, I still choose the website because it's not worth actually downloading something. With Instant, I can pick the better one without the hassle and commitment of adding something to my phone.
Google Instant Apps will fade away after a couple of years because nobody gets it and it's a solution looking for a problem again. They specialise in auto-failing ideas like that.
The problem is most internet/computing usage is done on mobile. Increasingly, this information is inside of Apps. This makes Google's search results less and less effective overtime.
That is, unless I can click on a google search result and end up in the middle of an app I've never downloaded.
I think a better criticism is that Instant Apps is attempting to rebuild internet, using apps. A destination I can go to, and only download what I need to run the experience in that view? And I can still click on other things and load those when I need it? It's called surfing the web, dude.
>> The problem is most internet/computing usage is done on mobile. Increasingly, this information is inside of Apps. This makes Google's search results less and less effective overtime
You don't have to get it to use it. I see LinkedIn is now supporting Google Instant Apps and when i searched for a name on the Google app, clicked on the linked link, it opened the profile in an app, though i don't have the app installed. It was seamless with the feel of native app. Don't see what problems it would create.
They specialise in the most popular mobile operating system, the most popular search engine and one of if not the most popular browsers. If they provide for instant apps, people will use instant apps.
Google didn't invent apps not being installed to run, and it hasn't really taken off. I don't see it doing so, outside of corporate settings (which is where others, like Microsoft have targeted.)
At what point is it pointless to have such an "instant app" service for general consumers? Why not just have a web app in that case? Then you can do cross platforming instead of having multiple teams. It makes sense for enterprise because it can lower cost of sysadmin, security, etc...not seeing the benefits of it for general consumers on either side of the issue.
I also don't think that relates to the article. Apps will still measure their success on MAUs not downloads.
Shouldn't this article have focused on number of downloads per person per month or year or whatever? It seems like that would tell a better story about the app boom being over.
So all they determined was everyone already has the top installed (and often pre-installed) apps already installed? What a surprise.
Also I would love to install more apps but to do so I have to clear space on my phone, and the apps I already have are slowing my phone down and eating my battery. For me it's always a matter of resources.
Only so many people are single and looking, and of them, only so many want what the app offers to single people. Even if the second number is 100% of the first, it's limited.
I certainly have no interest in accumulating more of them. It's actually nice to delete one whenever I realize I don't need it. Why do I even have so many to begin with? I hate these damn things.
I think "interest in apps" (i.e. people experimenting with, talking about, and sharing apps) plateaued in 2012. You can see this effect on Google Trends.
The data in the article doesn't really show anything people didn't already know. There's no surprise that the download rate of the top 20 apps will eventually decline. I mean, look at their saturation amongst users, it's still ridiculous.
What's interesting is going to be the new subscription model incentive that gives publishers an extra 15% for subscription retention after the first year. Don't forget, App Store 2.0 is just around the corner and it could change the game. Not saying that it will, but it could.
Many of the ads that ad-supported apps use to monetize are ads for other apps. That's not sustainable, and the end of that will be the end of the boom in ad-supported apps.
Sure the gold rush, get-rich-quick-cause-there-are-two-of-you era for mobile apps is over. But the boom for mobile apps will never be over, much like web apps will never be over. How many billion dollar websites emerged a decade after everyone said the web boom was over?
Apps are merely a distribution platform for services. As the world evolves, we will never run out of needs for services.
As long as you're solving a need and you're capable of communicating it to your target market, you will make lots of money.
Apps and software in general will forever be more efficient than their predecessors, and thus, IMHO, the app boom has only begun.
that is, by definition, not a boom. A boom is a period of unusual, unsustainable growth. The boom is over and the app market is shifting into a normal sustainable market where good products and services are valued and low-effort or less useful apps have a hard time succeeding.
The headline wasn't "apps are dead" - just because you misunderstood it doesn't make it clickbait.
I'm not sure that the app economy wasn't a temporarily bubble. We've yet to see many apps reach the sustainable part.
Very few apps are successful charging the customer. A few games are successful selling in-app purchases, but even those almost never last. Social apps some times get popular but rarely find a way to monetize, they wind up selling themselves to larger businesses who use them as a loss-leader.
Compared to desktop and the web, the number of sustainable businesses on mobile apps is depressingly small.
> But the boom for mobile apps will never be over, much like web apps will never be over. How many billion dollar websites emerged a decade after everyone said the web boom was over?
I don't think the author was arguing that there can never be "billion dollar" apps, just that the "boom" is over. Similarly, people still say that the "web boom" ended a very long time ago, but they aren't saying "You cannot make billion dollar websites now that the web boom is over", they are just saying that the boom is over.
Just look at a definition of the word boom to understand it better: "of a business or industry : to grow or expand suddenly" [0]
This article's primary source is a ComScore report purporting to show a decline in mobile app downloads per user.
Is there any reason -- really, any at all -- to believe that ComScore has accurate data on this?
I can't think of one. (And I did want to read about their methodology but spam is the price of the "Whitepaper" download, so I didn't get there yet.)
Does Apple give them this information on their customers' habits? I don't think so.
Does Google? That wouldn't be as exotic as Apple doing it, but still -- I don't think so.
Facebook?
So what exactly is this data based on?
I'm not even arguing that the conclusion isn't true. I'm arguing that ComScore, and Quartz, and Recode, and Peter Kafka too have NO IDEA what they're talking about here. They are pulling numbers out of thin air, waving their hands, and declaring their suppositions confirmed.
Oh wait, as a secondary source they have "Ad Intelligence" from "SensorTower."
So, self-reporting by ad-focused app companies that don't crunch their stats internally? And nothing at all about every other app in the world?
OK, to be fair maybe it's not just "thin air." Maybe it's more like hot air.
Anyway, as a programmer who has several times almost-but-not-quite gotten into the app world, it strikes me that you'd be crazy to do an indie app as a means to financial glory, but if you have a Big Idea these days in the consumer space you probably have to have a good app for it. Maybe several. Which means the "boom" or lack thereof depends a lot on what you think the "app business" is.
My source: anecdotes and extrapolation. Which admittedly may not be more accurate than dodgy pseudo-statistics, but I'm sticking with it.
The best of Web came after the dot com burst. In fact to gain maximum from a platform it is not enough if the platform got popular what matters is how many people trained to write software for that platform are available and how cheaply. Both Android and iOS developers are expensive compared to PHP developers.
New "must have" apps are always coming out. Snapchat is only 4 years old and took awhile to gain popularity. Tinder is 3 years old and wasn't popular until a couple of years ago. Stupid stories like these will always be written and always pop in a couple new apps that are exceptions but they aren't exceptions. The reason new apps are constantly trending is because people will and do always try new apps.
If apps are $1 per download, you need 100,000 downloads a month to have $100k a month in revenue. That's what you need for an office space and a few people working full time.
How many apps have 100,000 downloads a month.
Apps need subscriptions to survive, that App Store change can't happen soon enough.
I'm tired of all these useless (for me, I'm sure they're probably useful for others) apps. Recently I uninstalled most of the third-party apps from my phone, and it's been great. I've noticed my battery life has improved, and it reduces the number of companies that track and nag at me.
I'm down to ten non-Google apps, and three of em are work-related. This means that, excluding Google (which I've already accepted tracks my every move), only seven apps are solving some problem of mine. And out of those seven, I only use two on a daily basis.
The most important app I have on my phone is Firefox. You can install addons for uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere, which makes mobile web very pleasant.
My biggest problem with native apps is that they often show a total lack of respect for my time and attention. I don't want useless notifications that try to increase my engagement (looking at you Twitter and Instagram). I don't want you running in the background for ANY REASON at all unless I've given you explicit permission.
There's too much focus on trying to jam more and more features into apps. I want very fast and highly stable applications without any bullshit, and I'm willing to pay a high price tag if that's what it takes.
But apps can still work around these restrictions (even on iOS; for eg the facebook app was caught "accidentally" playing silent audio.) Even if that was truly a bug, the point remains that it's better to use the website unless you want something specific (offline access, push notifications, etc...)
A big part of preferring a website over an app for me is sandboxing. A website via safari can't access and email all of my contacts, or record my location via GPS, or any other nefarious thing I'm constantly on my guard against.
By forcing everything through Safari I have reasonable protections against these privacy violations, as well as good blocking of ads and trackers.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadI'm not hating on mobile-optimized web apps, just making the point that they aren't a one-size fits all solution, and as such, I don't think a blanket statement like "Progressive Web Apps make way more sense" really works.
https://stripe.com/apple-pay
Web apps don't support push notifications on devices. Again, a hugely important example of extremely common device functionality.
Web apps require constant connectivity. Device goes into a tunnel, app quickly stops working. Or even more realistic, user drives 20km to the middle of nowhere, has no cell service, but still needs to do their job without worrying about web site connectivity.
And those are just the extremely common use cases. Again, I'm not hating on mobile-optimized web. There are many use cases where it makes perfect sense. But you really can't make a blanket statement like "So for a majority of native apps a web app makes more sense"; it's just not the case.
HTML5 also has Notifications API[1] which can be leveraged for push notifications on mobile devices.
I do not disagree that there are many use cases for using Apps especially in the Enterprise space but there are far too many consumer apps than enterprise ones so maybe I should change that statement to "a majority of native consumer apps" :)
[1]https://mobiforge.com/design-development/web-push-notificati...
This isn't a technological issue at all.
This is actually a good thing but not if you were looking for a quick buck.
It's normal.
There's a lot more to consider once you look at how the entire app market is changing, rather than just the very top.
While I'm more tech savvy than most people I know, a lot of my friends have uninstalled the Facebook app as well, for a variety of similar reasons. Several have noticed what a battery hog it is, others got pissed off when Facebook added the messenger app, and others did it for privacy reasons.
Interestingly, I've noticed I use Facebook a lot less since deleting the app. I should see how my friends usage trends compare. I wonder if the friends who deleted the app have noticed a decrease in their Facebook usage, or if all my friends have decreased their usage and it's just a function of us being older/in different stages of life.
My bank is barely competent to use HTTPS with valid certificates - why on Earth would I chance using their new-and-untested app when I can't see if it's worse than their website?
The other answer is loans. If you get a good rate on a mortgage through a tech-illiterate bank, you're pretty solidly locked in.
http://www.cnet.com/news/firm-finds-security-holes-in-mobile...
Meaning that there are only so many people on this planet, only so many of us have a smartphone, and only so many of them again will be interested in installing a certain app.
Meaning that sooner or later that growth curve will flatten out.
And apps are just one example, the pattern repeats across all markets.
At some point you should be praising the fact that the other end of the bell curve has not kicked in, not worrying about growing further...
I do think it's somewhat likely though that top apps show similar trends as the rest of the apps. Saturation plays a role, but it's probably limited. Many of the top apps like say Facebook were likely to be on a very high percentage of smartphones 5 years ago, as they are today. Yet they used to grow faster than they do today, which indicates that there was significant growth in the number of actual smartphone users driving the growth of app installations. In short, not just market share but market size, too, and that latter factor affects apps regardless of popularity.
That raw smartphone user growth has dropped off significantly.
Let's not forget that smartphone sales have been linear for a while, not exponential, and in some cases (see Apple's latest results) even shrinking. And that's sales, which includes replacement units. If you actually look at new active smartphone users, by very definition that growth factor lies below sales growth. In rich economies (those where the ARPU is an order of magnitude greater than low-income regions where you're still seeing substantial new smartphone user growth, driving much of the app economy), the growth of new users is way down. Between 2010 and 2015 the US saw smartphone users triple, it's forecasted to only grow by a quarter from then on to 2019. And that plays a role for any app regardless of popularity.
What I do think is crucially missing from this article is that if you talk about the app economy, you can't just talk about user growth. The app economy is users * ARPU. That latter part is completely ignored, despite signals (particularly among the top apps they're analysing) that ARPU has grown quite substantially.
For example, Facebook grew its worldwide ARPU by roughly 30% in the year ending on Q4 2015, about 6 months ago. In the US it grew 50%. So even the raw smartphone growth figure I referenced to grow by about 25% in the US between 2015 and 2019, is blown out the water by a single year of FB revenue per user growth.
Here however I think there is a big difference between top and 'other' apps. Without any data, I'd guess that ARPU may actually be down for non-top apps, due to a flood of competitor's driving prices to zero, whereas top apps tend to get better at monetising their user base. I wouldn't be surprised if the app economy is more lopsided in terms of revenues than it was a few years ago.
App boom is definitely over, but not nearly as 'over' as user growth slowdown would suggest.
If people are eager to download apps, high-profile products like Instagram hit saturation quickly and a drop-off in downloads even though their user base is massive. If people are hesitant, they get some downloads and slow-but-steady growth. If people are unwilling, they don't get users at all (but we know what hasn't happened).
There's really no value for anyone else in a top-apps evaluation - the rest of the world isn't plastering Times Square in ads.
As an example, if I'm buying a product online (and not from Amazon), there's probably an app for the marketplace that's more mobile-friendly than the website. But right now, I still choose the website because it's not worth actually downloading something. With Instant, I can pick the better one without the hassle and commitment of adding something to my phone.
And instant apps is only a solution for free apps that don't require a sign-in.
The problem is most internet/computing usage is done on mobile. Increasingly, this information is inside of Apps. This makes Google's search results less and less effective overtime.
That is, unless I can click on a google search result and end up in the middle of an app I've never downloaded.
I think a better criticism is that Instant Apps is attempting to rebuild internet, using apps. A destination I can go to, and only download what I need to run the experience in that view? And I can still click on other things and load those when I need it? It's called surfing the web, dude.
Google's problem, not users.
At what point is it pointless to have such an "instant app" service for general consumers? Why not just have a web app in that case? Then you can do cross platforming instead of having multiple teams. It makes sense for enterprise because it can lower cost of sysadmin, security, etc...not seeing the benefits of it for general consumers on either side of the issue.
I also don't think that relates to the article. Apps will still measure their success on MAUs not downloads.
Also I would love to install more apps but to do so I have to clear space on my phone, and the apps I already have are slowing my phone down and eating my battery. For me it's always a matter of resources.
Active users, or total accounts? Tinder seems like something you'd use for a few months and either hook up or give up and not use it again.
What's interesting is going to be the new subscription model incentive that gives publishers an extra 15% for subscription retention after the first year. Don't forget, App Store 2.0 is just around the corner and it could change the game. Not saying that it will, but it could.
Sure the gold rush, get-rich-quick-cause-there-are-two-of-you era for mobile apps is over. But the boom for mobile apps will never be over, much like web apps will never be over. How many billion dollar websites emerged a decade after everyone said the web boom was over?
Apps are merely a distribution platform for services. As the world evolves, we will never run out of needs for services.
As long as you're solving a need and you're capable of communicating it to your target market, you will make lots of money.
Apps and software in general will forever be more efficient than their predecessors, and thus, IMHO, the app boom has only begun.
that is, by definition, not a boom. A boom is a period of unusual, unsustainable growth. The boom is over and the app market is shifting into a normal sustainable market where good products and services are valued and low-effort or less useful apps have a hard time succeeding.
The headline wasn't "apps are dead" - just because you misunderstood it doesn't make it clickbait.
Very few apps are successful charging the customer. A few games are successful selling in-app purchases, but even those almost never last. Social apps some times get popular but rarely find a way to monetize, they wind up selling themselves to larger businesses who use them as a loss-leader.
Compared to desktop and the web, the number of sustainable businesses on mobile apps is depressingly small.
I don't think the author was arguing that there can never be "billion dollar" apps, just that the "boom" is over. Similarly, people still say that the "web boom" ended a very long time ago, but they aren't saying "You cannot make billion dollar websites now that the web boom is over", they are just saying that the boom is over.
Just look at a definition of the word boom to understand it better: "of a business or industry : to grow or expand suddenly" [0]
[0] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boom
Is there any reason -- really, any at all -- to believe that ComScore has accurate data on this?
I can't think of one. (And I did want to read about their methodology but spam is the price of the "Whitepaper" download, so I didn't get there yet.)
Does Apple give them this information on their customers' habits? I don't think so.
Does Google? That wouldn't be as exotic as Apple doing it, but still -- I don't think so.
Facebook?
So what exactly is this data based on?
I'm not even arguing that the conclusion isn't true. I'm arguing that ComScore, and Quartz, and Recode, and Peter Kafka too have NO IDEA what they're talking about here. They are pulling numbers out of thin air, waving their hands, and declaring their suppositions confirmed.
Oh wait, as a secondary source they have "Ad Intelligence" from "SensorTower."
So, self-reporting by ad-focused app companies that don't crunch their stats internally? And nothing at all about every other app in the world?
OK, to be fair maybe it's not just "thin air." Maybe it's more like hot air.
Anyway, as a programmer who has several times almost-but-not-quite gotten into the app world, it strikes me that you'd be crazy to do an indie app as a means to financial glory, but if you have a Big Idea these days in the consumer space you probably have to have a good app for it. Maybe several. Which means the "boom" or lack thereof depends a lot on what you think the "app business" is.
My source: anecdotes and extrapolation. Which admittedly may not be more accurate than dodgy pseudo-statistics, but I'm sticking with it.
I think the best of Mobile is yet to come.
How many apps have 100,000 downloads a month.
Apps need subscriptions to survive, that App Store change can't happen soon enough.
I'm down to ten non-Google apps, and three of em are work-related. This means that, excluding Google (which I've already accepted tracks my every move), only seven apps are solving some problem of mine. And out of those seven, I only use two on a daily basis.
The most important app I have on my phone is Firefox. You can install addons for uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere, which makes mobile web very pleasant.
My biggest problem with native apps is that they often show a total lack of respect for my time and attention. I don't want useless notifications that try to increase my engagement (looking at you Twitter and Instagram). I don't want you running in the background for ANY REASON at all unless I've given you explicit permission.
There's too much focus on trying to jam more and more features into apps. I want very fast and highly stable applications without any bullshit, and I'm willing to pay a high price tag if that's what it takes.
Well, to be fair, you can disable notifications from apps since android 4.0 (which is a long time back)
And Android 6.0 and up should automatically disable background running apps (https://developer.android.com/training/monitoring-device-sta...) unless there is a good reason for them to be running
But apps can still work around these restrictions (even on iOS; for eg the facebook app was caught "accidentally" playing silent audio.) Even if that was truly a bug, the point remains that it's better to use the website unless you want something specific (offline access, push notifications, etc...)
By forcing everything through Safari I have reasonable protections against these privacy violations, as well as good blocking of ads and trackers.