Obsessed with apps? I feel an increasing dependency on apps to function! Take them away and I cease to be as effective, but does having more make me a better person or will too many become a distraction? So with that in mind I thought high time for an ‘app audit’ and excluding pre-loaded apps I counted 42 which I loosely grouped as Social, Interest, Business, Entertainment and general.
Fundamentally apps are changing the way I Work, Live and Play, I can buy anything, pay anyone, sell my house, heat my house, reduce my expenses, submit my expenses, be inspired, get a another kind of lift and I can do it anytime, anywhere.
Application Stores provide easy access and an ever increasing choice; take Apple’s App store which now has over 1.5m available apps and which also saw App Store developers earn a cumulative $25bn in 2014. Google Play has a similar number of apps and Amazon claim to have over 330,000, each app offering something different to the consumer which is disrupting the market for many incumbent players.
Most apps I use are free but that’s of little concern to companies like 5 year young UBER who have massively disrupted the Taxi market in 55 countries and whose recent valuation is a whopping $40bn. Uber also claim to have over 160,000 ‘active drivers’ in the US alone which is creating a labour market in itself. And they are not alone, create an app that finds a gap in the market and company valuations can soar almost overnight, for example Square is a point of sale app that turns a smart phone or tablet into a point of sale terminal and with $30bn forecast in transactions this year that’s how SME’s in North America are increasingly transacting.
In retail, 1 in 3 online sales are now made on a mobile or tablet and the UK now leads Europe for Smartphone shopping, John Lewis have seen customer habits evolve where 40% of shoppers use their mobile to visit johnlewis.com whilst in-store, yet 1/3 of top UK retailers don’t have a mobile app.
I have just one TV in my house and I don’t care to own any more than one. I’m increasingly using my tablet to view on-demand channels such as BBC iPlayer, where viewers watched 255million programs in March this year alone. On-demand TV is also disrupting traditional revenue streams for TV network providers, as well as Media and Advertising agencies, as companies increasingly seek more targeted marketing methods – utilising demographic and preference insights gathered from your device.
I’m a mobile worker and it’s increasingly important that I have access to the same tools as if I were office based and these capabilities present themselves in the form of apps, so now I can book my travel, approve expenses, join company meetings, share confidential files and of course keep close to my colleagues via Jabber.
Research also suggests that business and productivity applications are the most popular category for UK developers so it’s safe to say that mobile devices have evolved beyond being solely communication and entertainment devices to increasingly being the workforce productivity tool.
The Internet of Things will continue to drive rapid application development and appeal to organisations who wish to exploit the many business, big data and analytics opportunities that the IoT is creating today.
If counting the apps you have today gives you a headache then stock up on the paracetamol as we’ll need to be faster and better in the future and apps will dominate our lives even more than they do today!
How many apps do you have?
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3 Comments
So now I have a headache and an inferiority complex…wow 119 anyone beating that ?
Far too many… 119 excluding pre installed. Some make me more efficient and some are just a distraction. There is deffinately a social downside to our obsession with apps and being connected all the time. Next time you’re in a bar or restaurant, just look at how many families, friends and couples are looking at their phones; it’s very sad.
Interesting article Dave – I have 53 with 15 I use in a business context. I’m not sure you should have classed the Arsenal one as entertainment however….!