Since they announced the release of the very first iPhone 10 years ago, the mobile app market has continued to grow. Last year marked the first time this progressive industry had reached its saturation point.
According to Flurry’s latest report, conducted on 940 thousand apps, overall app usage grew by a mere 11% last year (according to the annual report for 2015, it was an incredible figure of 58%).
What are we to learn from this apparent slowdown? Experts speak of market saturation, and some of them even claim that the gold rush with mobile applications has reached its peak. Be that as it may, one thing is for sure: in 2017, it’ll be even more challenging to draw users’ attention to a mobile app. And an apps success will be determined by how effectively it can steal new users from other app categories.
According to Flurry, the time users spent in apps in 2016 saw a sizeable jump (69%) than the year before.
Last year, it was social and messaging apps that saw the biggest boom, while game and news apps went through a slight drop. In that mix, shopping apps rose, too.
In 2016, the usage of shopping apps grew by a quarter, while the time users spent in them grew by a third. Their growth may be attributed mainly to the growth of an e-commerce market, easier mobile payments, and the spread of Apple Pay or Android payment services. The increase can also be a result of impulse shopping, something lacking among desktop shoppers.
The growth in the shopping category was monitored in the Czech Republic, too. Due to weak competition, the market is still primed to draw users’ attention using a shopping app. If you approach it as a strategic plan, it may earn you more orders than a mobile website, just like the country’s biggest online computer and electronics shop.
Number of orders placed in the Alza.cz app (iOS, Android, and in total) (Source: Mobile Internet Forum 2016).
About the report by Flurry
Flurry Analytics provides a mobile analytic and advertising system for over 400 thousand clients. In its research, it monitored over 940 thousand apps installed on 2.1 billion devices.
Source: http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/155761509355/on-their-tenth-anniversary-mobile-apps-start