According to a new study, the popularity of apps on smartphones is nothing more than a myth.
They say that the Palm Pre platform failed because of empty shelves in the market. There is an opinion that you should not take a smartphone on Windows Phone: there are still few applications for it. Evil tongues sometimes compare the BlackBerry App World with the “Children’s World” after the New Year: there is nothing but empty storefronts. But are apps really that important to smartphone users? A new study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project claims that this is far from the case.
According to its results, 68% of American smartphone users open up to five applications at least once a week. Surprisingly, 42% of them have never installed applications on their device on their own. As a rule, they use those that are already in the device. The reason for the decline in interest in applications and the fact that users are in no hurry to install them, Kristen Purcell, one of the Pew analysts, explains simply: “novelty is getting boring.”
A good example is shared by the writer Ghada Elnajjar (Ghada Elnajjar). In June, she bought an iPhone 4 and immediately installed 26 apps. After a while, she got tired of most of them, so she deleted them. I left only Facebook and MyFitnessPal.
This is not a special case, but a trend, says Anindya Datta, founder of the analytical company Mobilewalla. According to her, “We are constantly deleting applications. That’s why the number of downloads is a poor indicator of popularity.” From 80% to 90% of applications, according to Datta, in the end, users delete from their devices.
As for those applications that still remain in the smartphone, they are used very often. According to Monica Bannan, a Nielsen analyst, Android users spend an average of 90 minutes a day on their gadget. Moreover, 67% of this time is spent working with applications. Bannan claims that these results are quite comparable to those on iOS.