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by gruntled 4100 days ago
Misleading headline: most people don't install an app every month, but what about the apps they already have on their phone?

Edit: it's misleading because the article actually says 65% of smartphone users download zero apps in an average month. That doesn't mean most people never download apps. Just not every month.
2 comments
adventured 4100 days ago
It's not particularly misleading, it re-emphasizes a very strong - and well understood - point: the majority of smartphone users do not download very many apps.

The better criticism of this article, is that it's already well known that most smartphone users 1) don't download many apps and 2) don't use very many apps day to day.

Why is that? It's because most apps are not useful or valuable. If they were, people would use them.

The majority of people also do not visit a hundred Web sites each day. Rather, they stick to a very small number of sites, and tend to visit them frequently. No surprise app use is similar.

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Dylan16807 4100 days ago
It mislead me greatly. The headline is a very surprising claim that they're not participating in the app system at all, ignorant of its benefits. But actually they're already satisfied with the apps they have, and use some of them a lot.
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ComputerGuru 4100 days ago
How is that misleading? I think that's the point of the entire article. People aren't downloading new apps which means they're likely not plugged in to the app discovery scene. There's a much smaller surface area for developers targeting new customers than the number of smartphone owners.
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dingaling 4100 days ago
> which means they're likely not plugged in to the app discovery scene.

That is a very significant point.

I bought my wife a Google Play voucher at Christmas, and she was so overwhelmed by the mess that is the Play Store that it took her three months to find a decent solitaire app.

Everytime she would go looking for one she had to wade through pages of junk and just gave up.

Eventually I found one recommended on a forum and even then when we searched for the exact name in the Play Store it was only in the second row of results.

App discovery is HARD, particularly for people unfamiliar with app stores. I am not surprised that they just don't bother.

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