Last year marked the fifth year of Tim Cook’s reign, and year 3 of “Tim Cook’s Apple”. With recent technological shifts, Apple is at a crossroads of sorts; therefore, I believe a pre-mortem is expedient.
This is a great article.
I, too, wonder if Apple is so stuck on “let’s just slap apps on it” that it serves to detriment their efforts. Virtually all their product introductions lately centred around slapping apps on existing, boring hardware and hope for the best. I’m not sure if the linked article’s suggestions are the right way to go, but I do know that Apple places more faith in apps than is really warranted.
A cold and harsh truth Apple doesn’t seem to grasp: nobody cares about apps. Apps are done. People have a small set of apps they use every day, usually the big name apps such as Facebook and Twitter, and really – that’s it. Aside from us nerdier people, nobody browses through the App Store or Google Play, filled with anticipation for what they might find. If you really break it down, I’m pretty sure most people use maybe 2-3 apps daily, and any others maybe once per month.
That’s really not something you want to bank your product strategy on.
I love it when people scream about the importance of privacy and then complain that their phone doesn’t watch them enough to know their preferences better..
Edited 2017-01-24 20:55 UTC
I agree with Thom; I use an Android phone, but only have a few apps on a regular basis. In the end, I think this state was inevitable, especially considering how successful Palm was with just a few, very well designed and implemented apps. I really wish that more attention was paid to improving the fundamentals instead of new gimmicks, but that has never really attracted new customers.
My first idea when I read Thom’s comments was, true, how many apps do I use on a weekly basis…
On the other hand, I wouldn’t dream of going back to Windows Phone because some of my essential apps (my 2 banks don’t ‘do’ windows phone) simply don’t exist.
Essential apps to me:
– Banking (bank X & Y)
– a competent audiobook playing software (Material Player fits the bill)
– google calendar (a given)
– Here Maps (because of the ability to download a map for free, a holdover from the Windows Phone days)
– Dropbox to get at my cloud stuff
– OneNote to get at my notes
– some apps to talk to my lights & to my OBD2 device (not that important)
– Spritmonitor to keep track of my gas use (motorbike & car)
– Free42, alternative RPN calculator app (because I prefer RPN)
– train schedule app
My app needs are fewish (though the list kept getting longer), but I couldn’t ever get back to Windows Phone until it were supported by both banks… So apps are important after all.
“A cold and harsh truth Apple doesn’t seem to grasp: nobody cares about apps. Apps are done.”
Thom, that is a patently ridiculous assertion, and without any citation is simply an attempt to project a poorly-informed opinion onto the world at large.
This link:
http://www.bandt.com.au/marketing/tinder-beats-spotify-netflix-aust…
… references a free report available at App Annie (note: you actually have to sign up for the report):
http://go.appannie.com/app-annie-2016-retrospective
But in a nutshell (from the report):
“Given worldwide growth in both downloads and usage, publisher revenue grew 40 per cent year-over-year – an acceleration over 2015’s growth rate – resulting in US$35 billion across iOS and Google Play app stores.”
Of course, that’s just one source, but a little research on your part might give you a better understanding of why companies like Apple care so much about apps – it’s called money.
You might as well have said “nobody cares about software. Software is done”
Key point you may have glossed over:
Games are not apps – they are games. In other words – all that profit? It’s not from apps – it’s from games, and from big-name games, at that.
Edited 2017-01-24 23:18 UTC
Glossed over? You do understand that games are a category of application, right?
This is already talked in the linked article, which consider as another Apple mistake of taking games as just another app category.
Apple App Store revenue trend:
Calendar 2014 – $15 billion
Calendar 2015 – $20 billion
Calendar 2016 – just shy of $30 billion
Apple’s revenue from App sales was $8.8 billion up 49% year over year
January 1st 2017 had nearly $240 million spent that day ($72 million to Apple)
Doesn’t look to me like the data supports the notion that “nobody cares about apps.â€
Apps economics are different to the economics of the old boxed software days, most apps are so cheap that buying them and then abandoning them is simply no big deal. I ended up buying half a dozen pedometer apps before I found the one that I actually preferred to use in the real world, and the whole thing cost me peanuts. I have dozens and dozens of apps I almost never use. Quite a lot aren’t loaded either because I decided they were not of use or but more commonly it’s because their use scenario was very limited (Example: I only load the Ljubljana map app when I visit that city). A hard core of a few apps get daily use (London tube, traffic and bus apps, the pedometer, Microsoft Pix, Instagram, etc) and are now essential to how I live.
Apple’s super healthy app ecosystem, is part of what makes the iOS platform a success, but there are many other factors. The brand reputation is a key one but I also think Apple’s retail network (couple with its generous customer care culture) is often over looked.
The ‘apps aren’t important’ meme started when it became apparent that the pattern of developer support for Android and iOS was not going to replicate the old historical pattern of developer support for for Windows and Mac. Once it became clear that the ecosystem advantage of iOS was not going to be eroded by higher Android unit sales the message became ‘apps aren’t important’. They are – but so are a lot of other things.
75% (iOS) and 90% (Android) of that application store revenue comes from mobile games.
Games are not apps. Stop equating the two. You have to be blind to still claim that apps on mobile are thriving.
Edited 2017-01-25 10:55 UTC
Silly semantics.
Remove the category of apps that is a the biggest seller and then point at the remaining rump and say its reduced size is evidence that the app ecosystem is dying. Nobody in the real world, or with an ounce of common sense, cares what category an app falls into, they just know whether they want it and are interested if it is it available on any given platform.
I’m sorry, but you can’t just equate crappy, pay-to-win mobile games to applications. We have never called games applications. Nobody calls Call of Duty an application. Nobody called Wolfenstein 3D an application.
Excel is an application. Pages is an application. Games are not, and never have been. It’s insanity to lump the massive profits from games together with the meagre profits from apps (esp. for non-big brand applications) together, and then claim mobile apps have a bright future.
You are disagreeing with virtually every iOS developer, famous or otherwise.
Edited 2017-01-25 11:21 UTC
I’m afraid I have to disagree on this point. As a developer, it’s MARKETING that games are not apps. Developers have always and will always tell you that games are merely one type of application. Bugs and insects, dude. All games are applications, but not all applications are games.
I meant to add to my essential app list the wonderful ‘UK Map’ app that means I have a complete set of detailed Ordinace Survey maps on my phone that doesn’t depend on network data.
To contextualise the “really not something you want to bank your product strategy on” comment, Apple’s services revenues are now comfortably bigger than worldwide cinema box office gross revenues, and are three times bigger than US box office revenues.
Apps ecosystem are pure Pareto’s distribution: a few apps are used by everyone, and a zillions of apps are used by relativelly a few
In a Pareto Distribution, what matters is the total picture. Both the 80% part and the long tail
I have more than a dozen non game apps that I use at least every week. From photo editing apps, to Scrivener & Pages, to Numbers and Excel, to real estate to eBay to … apps I use for creating music, to Maps and big GPS programs for longer drives and airline programs for trips. Grocery store apps (coupons and shopping lists) to … well plenty of apps.
I’ve whittled my non game apps as a whole down to 37, all of which I use at –least– once a month if not more. Anything that I use less than that gets pushed to a 4th page and is deleted if I don’t use it in three months.
I have 7 games, about a dozen movies, 8 music videos. I have Podcasts and ebooks.
I partly manage my TiVo Season Passes on multiple TiVo units.
I guess I’m not an average app user
Edited 2017-01-25 20:46 UTC
2-3 apps a day, plus 10 games a day.
Some corporations are falling for apps big time. They want their various departments on apps and communicating with employees that way. Think retail. Do you want your 1000 store employees on the facebook app or your employee/team app?
I see the original craze of apps dying down, now it’s real work. Nearly every modern brand can use an app to either promote or integrate, making it the primary focus these days.
App first, website second is the pecking order in many cases, so if you believe apps are dying, then what about the WWW?
• Gmail
• OKCupid (as frelling useless as that site has become for me)
• Verizon (bill paying)
• credit union app
• Netflix
• VLC (just started testing using it to play media from my network)
• iWork
• Dropbox
• Yelp
• xkcd
• Amazon.com
• A few miscellaneous apps I don’t use often enough to justify listing here, but they are still installed and used occasionally.
• I plan to get Scrivener at some point for writing…
• a few graphics apps I admittedly don’t use as much as I thought I might (I like the Pencil on my iPad Pro, in concept, but the execution is inconsistent across apps and the stylus tip is too slippery)
• and a LOT of music apps for synths and composition (which I use pretty regularly and tend to move over to my Mac once I feel I’ve gone as far as I can on the iPad).
The only two games I play regularly are Fallout Shelter and (less frequently, but adored) Monument Valley. I only have the one installed on my iPad.