Mobile Apps Take Groot

Wasabi Roll has developed quite the fan base.  As a result, the staff does pay attention to the statistics once in a while.  We did notice a paradigm shift in how the world accesses the internet.  In particular, we noticed the shift in OS used to jack in to the matrix.  Back in the day, it was a question of Windows vs. MacOS.  So we took this morning’s stats and noticed that Linux was the reigning champion with 77%.  Knowing that Linux isn’t the preferred desktop operating system, we decided to investigate.  What we found out is that most Smartphones use a Linux kernel for their OS, or a variation thereof.  This plainly shows that the world is remoting it from phones.  So to keep you up on how our culture “jacks in”, we will fill you in on some of the more salient behaviors.

People are spending more time on mobile vs desktop

Yes sportsfans, for the first time in history Mobile devices accounted for 55% of Internet usage in the United States in January. Apps made up 47% of Internet traffic and 8% of traffic came from mobile browsers, according to data from comScore, cited Thursday by research firm Enders Analysis. PCs clocked in at 45%.

Although total Internet usage on mobile devices has previously exceeded that on PCs, this is the first time it’s happened for app usage alone.

The shift follows a freefall in PC sales, which suffered their worst decline in history last year.

Smartphone adoption, meanwhile, increased 39%, acording to research firm IDC. This trend will likely continue thanks to improved user experience on mobile apps and the expansion of high-speed 4G access, said Andrew Lipsman, vice president of marketing and insights at comScore (SCOR).

As of January, 55% of American adults had smartphones, while 42% owned tablets, according to the Pew Research Center.

So when do we do our access? Well acording to Flurry's survey Feb of last year, just after dinner, so what does that tell us?  The argument of location isn't impacting the choice of device, because at home, the PC is readily available; however, even then the handheld is the vehicle of choice.  Interesting...

So now we know the device of choice, but how we access tells us an even more interesting characteristic.

As we understand it, there is a choice:

• Event Website: Participants on laptops and computers had the option to log into any given website to send solicitation emails, post on social media sites, upload photos and personal messages, and track events through an online console.

• Mobile Website: Participants on mobile devices automatically experienced a mobile-version of the campaign website, allowing them to log into the site and raise money through a mobile-optimized version of the website console.

• Mobile App: Participants with an Android or iOS device could download any given organization’s free mobile application (“app”) from Google Play or the iTunes store. The app allowed participants to log into a version of the website console, access their device’s contact list for email, post to social sites, and upload photos taken from their smartphones.

Well the results are in and like it or not, mobile app is the future.  In short, what wins mobile, wins the Internet.  Right now, apps are winning and the web is losing.

Ask any web company and they will tell you that they value app users more than web users. This is why you see so many popups and banners on mobile websites that try to get you to download apps. I t is also why so many mobile websites are broken. Resources are going to app development over web development.   As the mobile web UX further deteriorates, the momentum toward apps will only increase.

What is driving the rapid rise of Mobile Apps?

·    The fact that almost 50% of Americans now own smartphones is just the beginning of the explanation. We also know that the majority of tweets are read on a mobile device and that users of mobile Facebook are twice as active on Facebook as those on computers.

• When participants share their experiences on page links on social sites, it’s more likely than ever before that their cohorts may view that post or tweet through a mobile device. A review of 645,000 individual accessing the internet in normal traffic events found that over 15% of the traffic comes from mobile apps like Facebook, twitter, etc...

• Email is another platform driving donors to pledge by mobile web. Adobe’s 2013 Digital Publishing Report noted that 79% of smartphone owners use their device for reading email. In fact, that’s a higher percentage than those who use it for making phone calls!

So If that's the Case, what happens to the Web?

With this trend in play, the likely end state is the web becomes a niche product used for things like

• Trying a service before you download the app

• Consuming long tail content (e.g. link to a niche blog from Twitter or Facebook feed).

This will hurt long-term innovation for a number of reasons:

• Apps have a rich-get-richer dynamic that favors the status quo over new innovations. Popular apps get home screen placement, get used more, get ranked higher in app stores, make more money, can pay more for distribution, etc. The end state will probably be like cable TV – a few dominant channels/apps that sit on users’ home screens and everything else relegated to lower tiers or irrelevance.

• Apps are heavily controlled by the dominant app stores owners, Apple and Google. Google and Apple control what apps are allowed to exist, how apps are built, what apps get promoted, and charge a 30% tax on revenues.

The concern here is that commercial interest shall begin to wield what is and isn’t available on the internet – kind of like what we are seeing with television, and the cable wars happening right now with ESPN/Dodgers, etc…  These commercial interests reject entire classes of apps without stated reasons or allowing for recourse (e.g. Apple has rejected all apps related to Bitcoin).

The open architecture of the web led to an incredible era of experimentation.  Many startups were controversial when they were first founded.  What if AOL or some other central gatekeeper had controlled the web, and developers had to ask permission to create Google, YouTube, eBay, PayPal, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  

Source(s):

• http://topmarketingagency.com/mobile-apps-overtake-pc-internet-usage-in-u-s/
• http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/25/flurry-u-s-app-audience-now-roughly-equal-to-online-users-on-laptops-desktops/
• http://cdixon.org/2014/04/

So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”

____________________________________________________________

About Rick Ricker

An IT professional with over 22 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.

For more information, contact Rick at (800) 399-6085 x502