According to Nielsen, the top 8 smartphone apps in 2016 were owned by either Google or Facebook. App installs are stagnating, and I suspect that’s one of the reasons Apple nudged App Store developers towards subscription-based pricing last year. This is especially interesting since 80% of all mobile App Store revenue comes from games, and the average game makes $3k for its developer - peanuts.
Is this an argument for building products on the open web (which apps were supposed to have killed)? PWAs? Bots? @ire what do you think? As mobile reaches the top of its S-Curve, where do you think we should be looking next? (Please, nobody say VR.)
The apps that are wining are becoming platforms in their own right as the market matures.Mobile will remain the key distribution and interaction channel. How we use mobile is where the opportunity is.
Innovations that reduce friction on mobile will create new S curves. AI will produce new platforms.
For example imagine voice enabled apps that replace text entry merged with bots that get us closer to mimicking person to person interactions. You phone becoming a seamless personal assistant interaction across apps ala amazon echo.
US/UX will become more and more standardized around human like interactions that will make tech more accessible to more people.
I think AI is the new battle ground and will be the killer enabler as opposed to application - AI as a service.
There’s pros and cons for each platform. There will always be some types of applications that are better suited to native or to the web as well, the whole web vs native fight is kinda pointless
