Is that a mobile app? Nope, it’s a tofucken*.
Apps are slowly dying and it’s time to talk about the future.
Picture this: you’re hanging out at a bar with a friend, talking about the usual stuff. You know, like holiday plans, funny stories from work, etc. Then before anyone notices, you compulsively pluck your phone out of your pocket, because you just remembered this great new app that you want to show your friend.
Now think about it, how often does this happen? Be honest, really. Was it Prisma last time? Yeah, I mean they do some cool shit with neural nets to turn a picture of your cat into a Van Gogh so it would make sense. Or maybe it was something else, like Pokemon Go? Who knows. But it must have happened recently, for sure... Or did it?
Fun fact: did you know that 60% of mobile apps get zero downloads? I know, it’s kinda crazy. But is that a surprise? Well, here’s another one for you: 75% of downloaded apps only get opened once. That’s right, you read correctly, the average app retention after one day is lower than 25%.
Sad times for apps, really. Steve Jobs would probably yell at someone.
I mean, we’ve all witnessed it, we’ve all experienced the many drawbacks. Apps are useful and convenient until the point, well, where they’re not. Then you simply stop downloading these demanding little pieces of software that you know you will never use and that will transform your phone into a memory bloat and battery drain nightmare. And if you’re a developer you also know the struggle on the other side, which makes it so hard for your app to stand out. After all, 80% of the time spent on mobile goes to just 5 apps, so why even bother?
Mobile apps on a smart web diet
Now that you basically don’t install apps anymore, what else can you do? Open Facebook and Yelp on Safari or Chrome? Have fun with that. It’s like giving up meat and going full vegan, some people do it, but mostly for other reasons than the taste itself. In fact what’s even more striking than the disdain for apps is the sheer hatred of the mobile web. Some people just can’t stand their mobile browser.
Wait, don’t you feel we’re onto something here? The scent of progress maybe, an opportunity for the mobile web to get better? Just like that vegan tofu-based chicken eventually became tastier than the actual thing? Well, if soy needs a little secret sauce to satisfy you, so does the Internet on your phone. And the secret sauce here is a mix of artificial intelligence and out-of-the-box design thinking.
Apps are often compared to silos because they store data and keep it for themselves. Unless those silos belong to the same owner of course, in which case the experience is more integrated, like between Facebook and Messenger, or Google Drive and Google Docs. But for a vast majority of apps, we’re lacking a smart system capable of creating bridges between them.
With the mobile web, artificial intelligence can be used to create this missing link between apps, right into your browser. By analyzing and understanding the context of any web page you browse, it can instantly determine the most relevant use cases in order to anticipate your next actions. Here’s an example: If you’re reading an article about a movie you would be able to watch the trailer or buy tickets in just one tap. Having A.I. drag your current context from one app to another would be like embedding app information within another. Kind of like, ahem, a turducken, you see. Fandango is “placed” into Youtube, which is in turn accessible from within IMDb, etc.
The world needs a smart browser, one that recommends relevant things to do, like a personal assistant for the web
What’s more, mobile apps are, unsurprisingly, often used while on the move. Just look around on your daily commute and you’ll see people with a phone in their hand, sometimes carrying a bag or a coffee cup in the other one. Then why do you need two hands to use a mobile browser? Why is the URL bar so hard to reach at the top of the screen and why do we keep making typos every time we search something?
Web browsers were never truly designed for mobile, that’s why the experience is so cumbersome. It was okay when the mobile web was just a bunch of static and unresponsive pages but mobile web technologies have seriously evolved since then and web app frameworks are now state of the art. The world needs a smart browser, one that recommends relevant things to do, like a personal assistant for the web, and that is so easy to navigate that you can use it with just one hand, like a TV remote.
I had the privilege of being interviewed by Neil Hughes, columnist at Inc. Magazine and the Huffington Post, and a forward thinker with a witty sense of humor. Below is the full podcast, let me know in the comments section what you think of our conversation about the future of apps and its convergence with the mobile web.
Oh, and next time you’re at a bar with a friend, take that phone out of your pocket and show them Ulli, it might be the very last app they need to install.
If you liked this blog post you will surely also enjoy the following articles I wrote earlier this year:
http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/07/how-the-smarter-web-will-rescue-apps/
https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/11/beyond-siri-the-ai-revolution-coming-from-the-web/
