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We're Just Not That Into You, iPhone Apps
maximus1 writes "A new report compiled by iPhone analytics firm Pinch Media finds the majority of people stop using apps the day after they download them, and only 1 percent develop a long-term relationship with any given app. Instead, most tend to lose interest after a few minutes, according to this article. Paid apps fare slightly better. 30% of the people downloading a paid app return the next day compared to 20% who download a free app. No surprises that the survey found that apps that focused on games and entertainment seem to outlast other categories when it comes to long-term love."
So...you're saying we should charge for EVERYTHING to maintain interest?
/me charges girlfriend $20 for sex...
Bored at work? Play Game!
I'm an avid buyer of iPhone apps and games. I get dozens every week. And, yes, just as the article asserts I rarely return to them after a day or two. There are exceptions, such as Tweetie (I'm utterly addicted to Twitter, see sig (and follow me!)), and a few great games (Trism, Enigmo, GeoDefence), but the majority I see as throwaway stuff.
Which is fine.
These apps are priced to be treated like that. It's a return to the PD and shareware library ethos of old (old? I mean late 80s/early 90s). I remember paying a buck or two for a disk with a raft of simple, mostly awful Commadore Amiga games. Fred Fish anyone?
It's pretty much the same thing. There were gems on those disks occasionally. There are gems in the App Library. Long may it continue.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Alrighty.
I'm stopping myself now because, to be honest, I really, really want to post something that's, well, "Flamebait" or "Troll" to Apple users. It's an issue of mine. I was an abused child.
It might be that I'm jealous of folks with the discretionary income to buy those stylish electronic gizmos that really aren't necessary for everyday life or for life in general. Or for the fact that I have Back Turtle Neck envy. I wish I could look as good as Jobs in one of those.I wish I could look that good balding! unlike Jobs who looks cool balding, I look like a dog with bad mange.
Oh, never mind!
The Apps store has a lot of junk. Quite a few apps are buggy. Some are interesting. The business apps are typically tied to third party services. Some are only interesting for 10 minutes. And some have a great deal of potential that's unrealized.
For instance I'd love a restaurant locator app that works outside of San Francisco, Chicago and New York.
A lot of apps provide the same info you can get from a website or web app. And as long as that site works on Safari on the iPhone, there's not much reason to install an app just for that task.
It's not that the apps aren't useful, but rather after you download the app you find that it's just as easy to accomplish the task like you've always done it before you downloaded the app.
Must ... resist ... snide ... Apple ... userbase ... comment ... argh ... ugh...
Lurking in the desert
You got your app and the author got paid. What is the problem here again?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
How dare you sir... oh look a butterfly!!!
Jeez, I am glad i don't have to run fricking outlook, word or excel. I would rather go back to telegrams, tip-ex and a slide rule since these would actually be sufficient to cope with 99.99% of the things that outlook/word/excel are used for in business.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Or could it be that people just want a phone and not some kind of do-it-all gadget?
Call me old fashioned, but I've never understood this obsession people have with making their cellphone do tricks and whatnot. It's a phone. Its purpose is to make phone calls. If you want more capability, get a laptop.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
The iPhone can connect to an exchange server, and read excel and word files.
I remember so well the proto-economy that was the PDA application marketplace. Virtually the same were present back then as well, but now it's all news all over again. Now, with a big online app store, it's just a more widespread thing.
Hopefully people won't think the only way to solve that problem will be web based apps (keyword there is "based", not locally hosted web apps masquerading as native apps). They work great on a desktop, but they will always suck on mobile phones. Just how it is with a small form factor.
the iphone is a toy, not a business tool.
Toy?!
I suppose you think designer clothes, plucked eyebrows and exposed midriffs aren't business tools, too.
I have a good dozen apps on my Palm that I use on a regular basis. But then I didn't get it until January 2000, so I never had to put up with the sucky apps you hated back in 1999.
I think that the revolutionary change that Apple brings to this situation is the accessibility. For Palm, and WinMob, a PC was usually necessary to install new applications. (Not sure about BlackBerry, Symbian, or the other common Phone OS environments.)
For an iPhone user it's 2 taps and maybe a password, and boom, there's your app. Microsoft has obviously seen what this means for users; they have an app store coming. Google made it a launch feature for Android too, and IIRC even Nokia will be getting into the act for Symbian.
If there's a castle floating upside down in the sky, then there's a castle floating upside down in the sky.
Rubbish. I use my iPhone for business, where before I used to have a WM device (besides an old iPod, the iPhone is my first Apple device). When I first got the iPhone I hated the little incompatibilities with Outlook and the reliance on iTunes for synching. Actually, I still hate that... but for the rest, I found the iPhone to be vastly superior to WM phones when it comes ease of use. The GUI is fast and responsive, the on-screen keyboard is very usable even with fat fingers (and I hate the tiny physical keyboards that many phones have), and I can hold the phone in a sinlge hand and operate it with the thumb, something I somewhat surprisingly find very convenient.
It's a matter of preference, I suppose. The iPhone falls well short of full compatibility with Outlook, which is the de facto industry standard in business whether we like it or not. A big mistake on Apple's part if they are truly after the business market (as they claim to be). There's a reliance on iTunes and it only accepts Apple-approved apps, which some may object to. But the ease of use of the phone more than makes up for all that. I'll not switch back anytime soon to a WM phone.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The browser on the iPhone is a revelation. It's the first small-format browser that has generated the same sense of "flow" that I get from a full-size browser. I sit down to use it after lunch then look up surprised when 40 minutes have gone by and I'm late for my next meeting.
Perhaps this survey only concentrated on iPhone users and not iPod Touch users. Perhaps those who have iPhones are not as interested in apps as they are in communication. I've found that most iPod Touch users (of which I and my 12-year-old son are) usually fill up there iPods with multiple pages of apps. Though I have bought apps, I would say that most of the apps I have are free. I had jailbroken my iPod Touch previous to the creation of the app store. If the app store didn't offer free apps along with the paid ones, it's possible I would have kept my iPod jailbroken. I haven't tired of many apps, and I use some apps everyday (like Chess Genius, iSports, iReversi, Sudoku, Facebook, WorldWiki, Maps, Stocks, etc...). Other apps like Guitar Chords aren't really the kind of app you use everyday, but are nice to have when you need them. So I dispute the claims of this survey. I think "we" are very much into appstore apps. I wonder if these are the findings of a envious HP iPaq owner or a "Zune Person"...
First, the case that you make about iPhone users using less and less functionality as time goes on is probably accurate. My question is whether you believe that this is unique to the iPhone, because I don't think that it is. I'm sure that the WinMo, Symbian, Blackberry, and Android users would have this trait to some extent as well.
Second, it's not *just* about whether they've got headphones handy. What about people like myself who plug their phone into the car radio? Some people have an iPod dock on their desk at work. One of my friends' mom has an iPod dock in the kitchen. just because I don't carry headphones everywhere doesn't mean that the music functionality goes to waste. It is simply used in a different context.
Third, let's take this to the desktop. I've got my freeware that I use all the time (Firefox, icechat, digsby, filezilla, ultravnc), my paid apps that I use occasionally, (ACID, Street Atlas, Office 2007), and the apps that I paid through the nose for (Adobe Suite, Mixmeister). Go to Download.com/Tucows/Softpedia and you'll find the same needle-in-haystack story. Apps I pay more for I use more, but I paid alot of money for them because I knew that they would prove extremely useful to me. While it's partially a self-fulfilling prophecy, it's partially just knowing that I need something before I buy it. this is true anywhere and on any platform. As long as there are developers, there are good developers and there are bad developers. It's up to the end user to sift between them.