The iPhone app download counter is grinding towards the one billion mark, but are mobile applications really much more than expensive content and faddish novelties?
The throw-away nature of iPhone applications was summed up by a recent survey from Pinch Media based on 30 million downloads from the iTunes store. A key finding was that application usage declines very rapidly after the initial download – only 20% of users return to run a free application from the day after they’ve downloaded it and around 30% of users return to paid applications.
That’s a lot of unused applications sitting on peoples iPhones.
Even the more “sticky” applications that are used regularly suffer from diminishing attention as the amount of time people spend on any application drops by around third in the first month.
Apple may boast that there are tens of thousands of applications available on iTunes, but a loose approvals process coupled with a development community “gold-rush” has crowded iTunes with a flood of very poor applications.
The landscape is awash with games that seem like throw-backs to 1980s console technology, low-brow novelties (how many fart machines does any one platform need?), pointless rip-offs, poor quality clones and branded cash-ins. Apple could learn something from gaming platforms who act as “gate-keepers” to prevent a huge amount of poor quality content reaching their consoles.
A key motive for much iPhone application development is that it provides a model for charging for content. Let’s face it - the vast majority of iPhone applications are, in essence, a chargeable means of delivering well-formatted content to a mobile platform. The same content could be delivered to a wider range of mobile devices by providing a mobile-optimised web-site, but you wouldn’t be able to charge for it.
It’s this potential for monetarising content that explains the rush to mobile applications. Add a perception among marketeers that mobile applications are a great way of generating PR “buzz” and promoting brands and you have a growing demand for application development which often amounts to little more than a glorified micro-site.
The idea of a mobile application marketplace is nothing new, but since Apple have made a success of the idea pretty much every provider has moved to create a store with Blackberry’s App World, Windows’ Marketplace, Nokia’s Ovi store and Google’s Android Marketplace all entering the running.
Given that all these stores are competing in a very fragmented mobile market and are all based on different mobile development platforms I do wonder how long device-specific mobile applications can maintain their momentum before consumers start to grow tired of poor quality applications and expensive content.