The Scary Truth About Mobile Apps
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- Опубліковано 7 сер 2023
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Mobile apps are in a...scary spot. Wanted to talk some numbers here.
SOURCES
Survey 1: www.businessofapps.com/data/a... number of apps downloaded,was also lower than 2020
Survey 2: explodingtopics.com/blog/smar...
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The question of "should we build an app?" is ALWAYS a valid one... However, I don't think the decrease in the number of apps installed compared to 2020 is a valid sign of this: as far as most of 2020 knew, we were about to all die alone in the viral-pocalypse Earth. *Of course* we were installing a ton of apps! We had absolutely nothing else to do!
Valid point. If you try to understand the graphic further, you can see a basic fit would bring the line to exactly where it is now. Covid was just a momentary growth boost, we're back to normal growth.
this sounds like hard cope
@@ko-Daeguit would sound more like cope if it wasn’t true. There is a basic fit that shows 2020 as an anomaly.
@@ko-DaeguExcept we see this pattern pretty much everywhere
But if 2020 was an anomaly why has it flatlined ever since Q2 of 2020?
This is like people coping with Twitch’s sinking user numbers.
I think 3 years of stagnation and regression is a worrying trend.
Also it just makes sense. I personally, along with most of my friends (non-devs), would much rather just go on the web for most things. I have a core number of apps that I want to use and that’s it.
In the past five years or so the number of phone apps I installed (25 or so), and the time spent on phone apps, pales in comparison to my browser usage (phone or desktop).
I like phone apps, but I like PWA’s more 👌
I've recently installed an app from one of the cloth brand to figure out it was literally a browser showing me the same view (and functionality) as normally I have on mobile Safari or Chrome :D 10/10
He didn’t call us nerds. 😔
Shit, might have to reupload
it's because you're an addict
A missing column, which is needed to understand the whole picture, is - number of smartphone users added. Since the number of app installs = number of app installs on new phones (which might still be increasing) + number of installs on old phones (which will go down over time), you need that separation. For example, the number of smartphones added from 2020 to 2021 was 0.34B vs from 2021 to 2022 was 0.31B. Hence, a decrease in app installs could make sense.
Apps a being used a lot but only the popular ones. As a rule of thumb, if the users are likely to use the service 5+ times a week they are more likely to install a native app. Otherwise they would use a web app.
This video is a great example of why understanding how statistical data is present is so important. This data set doesn't seem to include the fact that people aren't getting new phones, iphone sales alone were drastically under performing, so it's totally expected that you have users that have had the same phone for more than 1 year, or perhaps 3-5 years and never download a new app because they're content with what they have. Consumers especially in America have less buying power every month now. Lower app downloads can't be fully explained by "less interest" in apps compared to websites.
This same argument could be made against building websites.... or anything really.
"Number of people owning computers keeps increasing, but the number of websites people use has flatlined. If you are a web dev, you might be concerned".
If anything, this video proves that the market is solid and isn't going anywhere with its 90% WORLD WIDE market penetration.
Where are the statistics for website usage dropping though?
if you can beat this level you have 999 IQ
The day that Theo realises that Capacitor (without Ionic) is the in-between solution, it's gonna be a great day! It is similar to Solito in the sense, but the downside of Expo is that lots of plugins don't support the web. (looking at the react native maps for example)
Doesn't really surprise me when every new app seems to be like a £70 a year subscription these days.
Or a ton of advertisements.
I believe your Excel table indicates that people installed significantly more apps during the COVID-19 lockdowns when they were confined to their homes. Now that the COVID-19 situation is no longer dominating headlines, it appears that the number of app installations per device is gradually returning to the pre-pandemic norm. This is the era when people engage more with the physical world rather than the virtual realm.
For me, reason why I tend to use as little mobile apps as possible is the ability to use website on browser of my choice, with settings of my choice, and also, without ads if I want to. Using apps gives me 0 control, very often apps have ads in them, trackers, etc. unless they are enterprise app, such as e-banking apps.
In the browser you have tabs, history, search, bookmarks, the ability to pinch zoom, almost always you can select a text, and so on.
Plus in most cases when you have text, images, forms, and simple animations you don't need a native app and web technologies can handle it totally (web app/web-view).
Thank you and with SD cards being phased out phones don't have much space anymore. My phone barely has 1gb left and I don't have games if you have a web app and you have a mobile app I'm going for your web app if you don't have a mobile view I'll force Chrome mobile into desktop mode and use your web app.
I will still clutter your storage with service workers :) Well, at least few %.
I'm so glad you changed the spot from where you shoot videos, that last place was too dark
I would also really caution for further thought into why app installs flatlined in 2020. People had to install a number of new apps for work, communication, etc. That coupled with more initiatives to spend time offscreen is a clear reason why we would see it flatlining, but not necessarily decreasing from pre-covid levels. Just to be transparent that it's not like app installs have died. They have just slowed from the pre-covid growth trend.
I get pissed off any time I'm expected to install an app. Went to a convention, they had a QR code for a map of the convention, I scan it, and it brings up the google page for some random map application. Just make it a damn pdf?
Most of the time, app functionality can be exactly duplicated on a mobile browser. I don't need an app installed on my device to use a glorified webapp.
I think most people are just getting exhausted with apps, they're like toolbars circa 2005.
I don't really see any reason to install a native app, if that native app simply is the same experience as the mobile website. But there are still lots of very useful apps that wouldn't work without the deeper integration into other apps or the os itself.
I just wish I wouldn't get bugged about installing an app for every usable mobile experience, just because you want more permissions on my phone.
IMO the whole app vs web debates will get less and less important, IMO because with features like PWA (web-push, short cuts....) and transition apis the web move more and more to "native". In the same time technology like WASM enable app-devs to targeting the web with there tech-stack ( Flutter Web and Jetpack Compose Web). And no, not all apps need SEO😂. I really hope we will end up an place where native-apps or web-app are just compile targets.
Frameworks like Flutter also blurs the line between web apps and native mobile apps
I think when you have a small developer team and don't build cross platform you are irresponsible
Suggestion for a new video: Demystifying Over The Air Updates (OTA) with React Native (e.g. Expo, AppCenter, etc)
I think this is a weird takeaway from this data. Maybe people do have the apps they now need and are comfortable with and that slightly plays into it but also... people don't have to change phones as often because the market is maturing and the thing that forces anybody to go download 20+ apps is getting a new phone.
Either way I don't think this should scare mobile devs. If you build the app someone needs then you'll get downloads 🤷♂️
It’s a fair argument I have some questions though. From those 60% of web traffic users, are they visiting more websites than mobile apps? Getting numbers for mobile apps is easy compared to web because they’re a closed system so the comparison is between concrete vs unknown/unquantifiable yes?
Does the number of average installed apps include the pre-installed apps like UA-cam etc.?
Don’t overthink it. Just ask: “Where will my customer use my software?” If they’re using your software in public, at a party, while exercising, while on the toilet, etc., then build an app. If they’re using your software at home or work, prioritize web development and make the app later.
Theo, one thing we are seeing is that users do not understand how to install PWAs and refuse to read instructions when its one or two clicks of "install" or "add to home screen". The big lift here is getting those PWAs optimized, building (something like PWABuilder or using bubblewrap CLI), then trying to get that into the app store. If the app (whether native or PWA or something else) doesn't have an app store install option, most people do not understand which will cause your support tickets to go through the roof for a simple lift. I highly prefer the PWA route instead of native since its so similar and drastically reduces cost and overhead - especially when its required to be built by super small teams. The disconnect is people are trained to go immediately to the app store and breaking that training will cause a lot more pain than simply posting the PWA into the app stores. I'm for whatever causes less headaches. haha
I always keep a iPhone simulator open on my Mac, really helps with making sure my (NextJS, etc.) apps work just as well on mobile! Shame to see that ui libraries do not add long press behaviour that mimics hover behaviour by default, that seems like good UX.
Theo mentioned my city! Though I would love to hear him pronounce Wrocław
This is great insight and I wholeheartedly agree. Especially with the rise of wasm, there’s not telling what new functional capabilities can exist in web applications. It makes sense to have mobile-optimized web applications moving forward, only going for native when there are native specific requirements that cannot be overlooked or substituted.
Some features are embedded so they don't need dedicated app for it. Also web apps have become much more feature rich and have much better compatibility. I will not be surprised if the same happened already with PC
These mustache are really making me trust your informations 😁👌
The story might still be true, but the data can be misleading. If 6.5bn users have smartphones, even an addressable market of 0.1% would still be 6.5M users. If you have some kind of subscription model you can probably build a business on just capturing 1% of that market, if you are doing something like B2B even 0.1% could suffice.
These minuscule slivers of the market can look very different than the overall picture.
From personal experience, I think that most people I know (rich European country) browse plenty of webpages. But these are almost always rare or even one time visits, e.g. looking up a recipe. For things they use regularly they want an app.
This is why it's better to focus on mobile web, and then use Capacitor to publish your app instead of a PWA. Why not a PWA you say?
- Can't interface with every native iOS/Android SDK or feature out today or coming out tomorrow. Capacitor can.
- Can't use the massive ecosystem of third-party native SDKs. Capacitor can.
- As of yet, push notifications on iOS for PWA's is not fully done yet.
Also, you don't need to use Ionic with Capacitor, you can just do it with NextJS + Tailwind.
Depends on where the new smartphones were appearing over the past few years.. Perhaps demand for apps from developing countries is different?
theo can you share your thoughts on ionic/capacitor for mobile dev in contrast with react native
A humble opinion as someone who's used both, but anything other than a mobile webview with *some* native functionality and you're gonna want to get away from Ionic/Capacitor and move to React Native/ Flutter. I'd say you only need native if you're making a REALLY perforamnce-intensive app.
The numbers stay fairly consistent if you ignore the anomaly that was 2020 and 2021.
One of the few things PWAs have going for them is the installation process.
Agree with you here. People tend to conflate "mobile app" with "richer experience," but aside from truly device-level use cases like gaming there aren't too many things you *can't* do with a polished web app and/or PWA. Regrettably the education on how to do that is a bit lacking but hopefully will improve given the better support on iOS.
As long as Apple is taking 15% - 30% of revenue from most App Store apps, they will not let PWA become true first-party citizens of iOS.
@@Vim_Tim totally hear you, but I'm hopeful they'll take a sober look at the recent regulatory action (c.f. USB-C) and gradually start loosening their grip. Now that there's push the biggest gap I've noticed on iOS is the lack of a native installation banner and that also seems like one of the first things a hypothetical regulator from the EU would take aim at.
We'll see! Thanks for the comment.
@@GringoDotDev Unfortunately, mobile apps behave more like embedded devices than they do browsers. That is the sad truth. I wish it weren't the case, and that we were not slaves to Google and Apple. But the truth is that you need to have your hooks into the operating system. You cannot write an endless tree of divs in a mobile context and expect render performance to approach what SwiftUI, UIKit, Fragment/Activity and Compose to accomplish. React native has an answer for this, as it encourages flattened heirarchies and helps you out, but yeah, it sucks
Does it come from people or the apps ? Between dark patterns and enshittification, some apps become an hassle to have installed. Personally I've already uninstalled apps because they sent useless notifications.
Damn the price ticket for the conference is 800 Euro , one again 800 Euro , thats 1 month of minimum salary in Poland and thats the event cost not taking in consideration and travel etc
The types of smartphones is the forgotten variable. More people buying new phones are buying weak phones that punish the user for every modern app installed by being slower.
New location?
We all are so annoyed with the bombardment of intrusive ads that comes along with free android apps,so it is destined to happen eventually...
In my phone, i have like 5 o 6 apps installed by me, and like 28 web tabs in chrome 😂. I don't know, i only install apps when i use their web too much, like youtube, discord or twitter.
In the case of Twitter, I actually find their PWA much smoother to use than their native Android app.
Did you factor in everyone deleting twitter
I think the way to go is better mobile browsers and new features to make an web aplication behave like an app
Mobile browsing is dogshit
That’s basically the idea behind progressive web apps (PWAs)
I kind of blame this on Apple for their early base models with low storage. This got many users like me to avoid installing applications I didn’t need and prioritized photos over apps for using memo.
*installing app declining*
shows the normal bar graph
Personally, I strongly prefer a mobile app over a pwa, when available. The experience is just more polished
As a developer or as a user?
@@red_boumboth, lol
Which is ironic in my case because I worked for a company where the pwa was far more polished than the mobile app. I guess it depends on which platform the company starts on.
@@pinkdiscomosh2766 more like what the mobile app was made in and how.
@@red_boum both
This also begs the question: what is technically considered the most mobile friendly browser? Coming from the developer perspective. 🤔
Mobile apps < web apps
If you draw a straight line across the average slope, it would appear the growth is on track. The dip simply appears to be a correction from the big jump during covid. That said, the moral is "Don't expect pandemic-level usage anymore" 🙃
Also most of the apps which are being installed are actually games, which comes under game development.
Wait, isn't hover same as holding?
What if I create an app for a specific business and not an alternative to WhatsApp, do I really care for statistics? I don't know...
if you create something for a ransom business. Dont do apps. People tend to not want to download a app to get the same experience they would get in a browser.
greetings from Poland!
I don't think the survey took into consideration sideloading apps, cuz many of my favourite apps aren't from Play Store (of course ios shit has little to no sideloaded apps)
Add the app store fees
Welp, the React Native EU conf doesn’t have a mobile app since 2019 😅
man this is ironic yet funny 😂
Not sure if much of a concern unless app installs goes _down_. That's still a SHIT ton of downloads/installs.
there's always around 21 app per user
nothing changed
Mobile web is a shitshow. Even big companies fail there often.
I go for the mobile app if I use it multiple times a week.
Hey Theo, great stuff ❤
I hate it when every shitty service requires their own shitty app on my phone that has nearly no memory anyways.. STOP MAKING ME INSTALL BS APPS!!
That's my interpretation why numbers stagnate / drop
This is the same misconception that people have with the stock market. Look how much the usage jumped during the pandemic. It didn't "flatline", there was an outlier growth period that's been maintained. It's not a coincidence it flatlined in 2020.
Wait actually we have crossed 80 billion already
Saturated market, every app is bloated with ads, the google play discovery SUCKS.
Hmm, wonder why this is happening.
What if users are moving from mega corps to indie apps? Then your assumption of developer demand not going up might be wrong @2:02
So flutter is gone ?
"Before android development became a viable thing. with kotlin" I was thinking the same LOL
How did you get your jawline to look so good?😅
Why nobody talks about the fact that not only people install less apps, they also tend to visit less sites... The same problem, but not that obvious.
Htmx, AI, no code solutions - everything is telling us that frontend as we know it is the first candidate for replacement, but somehow it's mobile that is a bad career choice. Not frontend.
I prefer web apps over installable apps. I don't want to install, and keep updated, a bunch of apps on my phone. Seems like there are updates every month, for dozens of apps on my phone!! I'd rather go to a website. No hassle with constant updates, and you can still "Add to homescreen" from the browser so you can open it instantly like a native app.
Why would the average increase with mobile users? It looks fine to me no increase no decrease
Most apps are the same the top, the top 10 apps are free and based around social media. Native apps that mean something works. There are 100s of apps that all do the same thing.
I dunno if it's just me but tbh it looks like the plot is still trending upwards
Takes zero motivation to search for a website. Takes significant motivation to download an app.
Tauri for mobile is exciting
I shifted from native iOS and Android to Ionic in 2016 and haven't looked back. The only time I've been tempted to go native again is for deeper integration with Apple Healthkit, and background tasks like automatic file syncing.
Ionic and Capacitor are awesome. Would generally choose them over RN anyday.
Most mobile apps today are spyware and try to legitimize all telemetry as valid metrics so im quite happy with this development.
You forgot to mention with progressive apps you don't have to go through apple or Google app stores and you get to keep more of your profits
Installing an APP is giving full code execution on my most sensitive device, if I can do it on a web page, I will do it.
Why would I give JAVA code execution when I can give JS browser code execution to the same developer/company that I DO NOT TRUST
The number of apps installed is correlated with the number of smartphones bought. That number was affected in a similar way. It would be nice to put those numbers in contrast, like a per capita analysis to see if the hypotesis keeps.
Nice T-Shirt
The same can be said about websites. The truth is, mobile apps and web apps are both dead. But I would rather use Walmarts mobile app than their website. And I rather use a mobile app for anything instead of a web app. In the future, I personally feel it’s only right to predict that a handful of companies will own 99% of the worlds attention.
Think that most people don't like downloading the app since it often makes you feel like a second class customer since most features only works on web because the tech team responsible for the UX likes to code web rather than mobile.. 50cents right there
Looking at the overall number of apps being installed is such an obtuse metric. If you want to be successful in building anything for the market, you have to have a value prop for the user. Cellphones are reaching saturation; especially in Western 1st world markets. People have the things that they do on phones dialed in and it's no longer the install 20 apps you dont ever use anymore.
People spend the majority of their time in very few apps, social media, media consumption and some utilities and games to pass the time. Cell-phones are becoming stable boring tech and people are less prone for wild exploration. Devs as always have to give people a reason to switch.
The argument that installs / # of users is correlated with the health of the mobile app industry seems flawed to me. That's an odd metric to evaluate the state of an industry, something like avg. # of hours spent on smartphones would be far more meaningful. The advent of better technologies does not necessarily decrease the number of devs required either (otherwise we would have seen an industry wide downward trend of devs). While I normally agree with your takes, I'm not so sure about the premise of this video.
I don't think this is the right way to look at this issue, though. For starters, is the apps/user the right metric? There's a clear increase in "apps installed" so why is that not the metric and "apps/user" is? Also, Theo is looking the 6.5B as user instead of active phones. I know a ton of people that have two phones. A personal one and a work one. It's a much more complex issue than it is presented here.
Also, building an app might be easier than it used to, but you still have maintenance, updates, breaking changes, you name it… It's a big decision. All in all, I disagree with the premise of "apps/users" or that there's a clear decline. To begin with, the decline started from 2020, when (I hope) we can all agree there was a monumental and historical change in human behavior. As big an outlier as anyone can imagine.
Or you just use capacitor to build it quickly
Hi from Poland
Raise your hand if you like the web experience on mobile better than an app
You’re contradicting yourself….
If you’ll look at your own data you’ll notice that we’ve been always been in a decline on “apps per user” because 2019 < 2018 < 2017. But then we had a huge jump in 2020 and you said it yourself “the Covid year”, everyone was home and downloaded more app, but the truth is that this year is an the unusual one and maybe we see 2022< 2021< 2020, but if we compare this satay to regular year you’ll notice we kinda climbed the stats because 2021 & 2022 > all year before except 2020( which is the unusual one).
You should update chrome... Its hurting my OCD lmao
6.5 billion smartphone users? That's insane if you really think about it, basically 1.5 billion people don't own one, that could easily be from the ubder 5 group which is aroung 700 billion and the 60+ group which is around 1.2 billion, I don't really know how it is in other countries but in mine it seems those over 70 don't own a smartphone. Anyhow it seems basically everbody at this point has a smartphone.
also didn’t help that most apps were built with this crappy react native and flutter frameworks ruining the fast native feel apps should have that respect the design language of the platform, they brought all their poor design choices from the web to mobile.
and being able to bypass apple to make a release is not a feature, is the sure way to get banned for breaking the rules
lol ur tabs cmu 4:13
Its just Google Vs Apple. Google wants users to use the browser more. Apple wants users to use the phone more.
Wrong! I'm watching this on my desktop lol
2 years of plateau is not conclusive of the fact that mobile apps are dying. There might be other reasons why people install fewer apps or less frequently. It might due to low quality of the apps which to be honest is not impossible to think. Considering that mobile dev has become very simple nowadays, this opens the doors to any kind of silly, malformed and low quality app to make the cut. Besides, apps do not come exclusively from app stores. The introduction of PWA and the progress that all browsers have done to improve PWAs might also be a factor. I think the way you are looking at the data is a bit on the negative side, but who knows you might be right
Low budget, web app. Many budget, why not both?
I think mobile apps are in decline, because of unnecessary permission requirements. I don't like apps that require my contacts, GPS location, my files, when they have nothing to do with them.