If you do a Google search for “app discovery is broken”, you’ll get over 45 million hits, including a first page filled with articles on the issue. It’s no longer a question of is it broken but how badly it’s broken. So bad, in fact, that Twitterrific is ranked 100th for the keyword ‘Twitter’. Luckily, we won’t have to rely on the almost decade old, marketplace-based discovery model for much longer. It’s the physical world that’s going to fix it.
What went wrong?
The current model worked fine for some time: it itself solved the issue of discovery years ago. Before the rise of the App Store and Google Play (known originally as the Android Market), the lack of a dominant marketplace made it difficult to find apps. You could spend hours googling for the right piece of software. When I recently asked friends where they got their mobile apps back in the Symbian days, the first thing that came to their minds was… BitTorrent. Then, the iPhone happened and the App Store followed shortly thereafter.
The problem appeared solved. With developers flocking to the App Store and Google Play, users would never have to look for apps elsewhere. Everything they needed would always be one click away, available immediately. It was a win-win situation: people have the apps on hand, developers make money, and so it goes. But as the number of smartphone users grew exponentially (and it still does: it will reach 2.5 billion in 2018), so did the number of apps. Right now, the App Store and Google Play have almost 3 million apps combined. Out of them, 82.8% almost never appear on top lists for any category. When it comes to money, it’s even worse: 1.6% of developers rake in nearly all of it. The competition is so fierce that it’s becoming impossible for new developers to break through. The problem has scaled faster than the solution.
Even if you manage to make your app seen and installed by people, you’re still facing a challenge. How do you keep your users engaged? How do you make sure they don’t forget about your app within 24 hours? According to Nielsen, the average smartphone user has 42 apps installed. Eighty-four percent of people, however, will not use more than 10 apps daily, and 55% will not use more than four. And the average monthly usage, 27 apps, has barely increased over the last few years. So, yeah: mobile is eating the world, but the people who feed it are often hungry themselves
Nielsen
Where’s the fix?
Developers complain that being relevant on mobile is becoming more and more difficult. The decay of the current model has created a situation where you’re either a superstar or a nobody; there’s very little space in between. The good news is that the tech giants building the ecosystems are already taking steps to find a fix. It’s also clear that location context and the physical world will play a huge role in making that happen.
You’ve probably noticed that your iOS lock screen often shows an app icon in the bottom left corner. This Suggested Apps feature is based on geofencing. iOS knows where you are and uses this knowledge to enable you with quick access to a relevant application. If you’re sitting at Starbucks, you’ll see the Starbucks app. If you’re working out in a gym, you’ll see the Equinox app. And if you don’t have the app installed, swiping up from the bottom left corner will take you straight to the App Store, so you can download the right app for your specific context. Suggested Apps also work with iBeacon. This gives the feature much more granularity. If you were walking across an airport, it would be impossible to use GPS geofencing to learn whether you’re at the gates and need your boarding pass, or just strolling through the duty-free zone, where a discount coupon would be handy. Beacons offer a solution.
If you want to learn how to use iBeacon with Suggested Apps, follow our guide in a separate blog post.
The current iteration of Suggested Apps still offers limited utility. After all, it’s only a single slot with no options for customization. You cannot set it up to show the Spotify icon when you get into an Uber. You cannot set it up to show the Salesforce icon when you’re in the office, but replace it with Calendar if you have a meeting in less than an hour. You have no control over which icon will be displayed if two apps share beacon infrastructure to push notifications over the same beacon network. Google’s approach also isn’t very sophisticated yet: they’re experimenting with search results by making them actionable (e.g., ordering food directly from search) and showing in-app content. But this is just the beginning, and both Apple and Google are setting their sights on doing much more with geofencing and microlocation. App discovery will be in the middle of further experiments and new features, because it opens up more ways for monetization, which is the key to a healthy ecosystem. And healthy ecosystem is in the best interest of everyone: software giants, developers, and users.
If you look at the history of Estimote, we never positioned ourselves as a beacon company. From the very beginning we’ve been saying that we’re building an OS for the physical world. Today we’re standing by that vision even stronger. Of course, beacons, nearables, and Indoor Location are all parts of it. But so is the evolution of how apps are discovered, distributed, and engaged with. We believe that the canvas on which developers will build apps in the near future will not be devices, but the physical world: places and situations. We’re getting to the point where you will no longer be thinking about creating an app for the Apple Watch, Android phone, or Windows tablet. You’ll be creating apps for the workplace, for home, for commute, for lunchtime, for a museum, for a night out, for a city: this is the new OS. And everything is a part of it.
Wojtek Borowicz, Community Evangelist at Estimote