Can the App Store be saved?

AUGUST 12TH, 2016 — POST 221

When the iOS App Store launched in 2008, the future of everything was going to be apps. Not a decade later and the only future Apple publicly sees as defined by apps is TV (and that might just be because they couldn’t get the deals to do it any other way). Even the Apple Watch — the newest of Apple’s product categories and one that at launch was laced with a “developers will figure it out” tenor — has seen refocussing around Apple’s first-party fitness software.

There are two forces that have led to the current state of mobile apps on iOS (a lot of which can be equally applied to Android). The App Store has exploded in size. As Quartz reported yesterday, current projections have the App Store pegged to bloat out from the current just-over-2mil to crack the 5mil mark by 2020. That’s a lot to sort through, a lot of ground to cover in research and trial and (often) spending money any user would have to do.

And the second force shows just why user don’t really care to put forth the effort. Included in the Quartz piece are figures that put around 90% of a users time put into only 5 apps. Another figure that has been popular to wheel out in these discussions is the average number of apps downloaded by a user per month: zero. The force at play here is a cornering of the homescreen by, really, two companies: Facebook and Google. Those top 5 apps for a vast majority of people invariably end up being Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and maybe Google’s own search app. With so many of a user’s mobile needs covered by first-party messaging and email apps and the app monoliths by Facebook and Google, there’s not much room for anyone else.

Apple’s changes to subscriptions on the App Store — as well as allowing search-positioned ads — does show that Apple recognises the problem. And who could forget the upcoming Apple original series Planet of the Apps, set on raising app literacy and fluency of interested users. But there’s a very real sense in which the horse might have bolted: the App Store might not be saveable.

It’s long been acknowledged that as rich a platform as iOS is, it’s pretty close to impossible to be a profitable developer. The only dependable genre to develop within, unfortunately, is free-to-play games, loaded with microtransactions and hunting for “whales”, those few users who drop literal thousands of dollars on sating the dopamine pathway these games leech off. And as well-intentioned as curation is, there’s an invariable bias towards apps that are visually engaging, a bias it’s hard to imagine Planet of the Apps bucking. A game like Monument Valley or drawing/creative app like Procreate makes a perfect banner ad, perfect “Featured Apps” simply because their preview stills and video can be so engaging.

And as much as developers, Apple, and enthusiasts like me might bemoan the current state of the App Store, I frankly don’t think most people care that much. If they do have a suite of apps they’re using that aren’t stock, the chances are they know what they like and aren’t perpetually hunting for something better. Except in the event that an app is closed down (RIP Sunrise), I would hazard a guess that a lot of iPhone users have formed their app habits years ago and are unlikely to care to change.

Software innovation, at least on mobile, might just prove a less and less viable means of making money. Sure, there will still be incredible experiences like Blendle or Overcast, but at some point, it would seem the size of the App Store will be unsustainable. Even as just a minimal user of Product Hunt, I’ve noticed a turn away from mobile-exclusive apps and an increase in service-level products, products with tiered, long-term pricing models that are professionally oriented. These more integrated service systems — which could very well include a mobile app instance — look to not only be more viable financially but start to approach the “array of screens” model of computing, something which the paradigmatic discreteness of the App Store actively resists.

The App Store will continue to grow, denser and denser. So dense there won’t be much room to move very soon.