[rangera]

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.

[Declanomous]

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.

[Bartweiss]

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?

[brianwawok]

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...

[0x6c6f6c]

It's a sweeping statement to say that banking apps are bloated. Some are very well made. I'm pretty happy with Chase's banking app to say the least.

[superuser2]

There is very little reason to be tied into a particular bank these days. Why not switch to a more tech-literate one?

[Bartweiss]

Most recently, regional branches. I was living somewhere pretty limited in in-person options, but I may switch now that I'm not.

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.

[superuser2]

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.

[praveenster]

In fact many of the banking apps seem to have stored usernames, passwords etc in the clear.

http://www.cnet.com/news/firm-finds-security-holes-in-mobile...

[scarface74]

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.

[ashearer]

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?

[wwweston]

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.

[submeta]

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.

[digi_owl]

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.

[jonas21]

For most business models, if the most pressing limit on your growth is the number of people on Earth, you're probably in a pretty good position.

[digi_owl]

True. But i just wanted to give a, perhaps overly, simple example of growth not being capable of going on forever.

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...

[IkmoIkmo]

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.

[frozenport]

Also this might point to diversity also know of a s longtail effect.