I know in the middle of a hype cycle that it is fun to be caught up in the insanity, but reality is always just a walk away. Let’s review a claim that is going to make you question the sanity of the speaker. From GetJar, at a mobile conference:
“Apps will be as big if not bigger than the internet, They will peak at around 100,000 by the end of the year. That will be a tipping point and after that there will be a gradual fall in the rate of development. The full blossom will come in ten years and mobile apps will become as popular as websites are today with consumers,” [source]
Just to get some perspective, we are talking only about mobile applications. Anything you use on your desktop is not what this man is talking about. There will be a 100,000 mobile apps by the end of the year. Also, the will be larger than the internet. Finally, they will be individually as popular as the big websites on the internet. We are going to have to take each claim by itself. Let’s do this is order.
- 100,000 apps? Of all the claims, this is the one that makes sense. The developer communities that have been built and are growing are churning out generally shitty apps at record rates. If you do not beleive me head over on your iPhone to the top 25 free apps. I rest my case. This number sounds arbitrary (why not 95,000?) but is reasonable.
- Larger than the internet? This man does not understand how big the internet is. 100,000 apps? Big deal. Google and Bing index billions of pages across the internet. Petabytes of data. Millions of new pages daily. Tens of thousands of blogs. Millions of photos. Hell, Facebook alone is probably still bigger than all of the mobile apps from mobile app stores. This man is simply not thinking about the size of the internet. It is not just the US, it is the meeting place of the world. Big.
- Apps as popular as websites? Perhaps in a few select cases. Recall that apps generally are uni-platform. For an app to be bigger than a major website, it would have to control a large percentage of a single platform. And then corral users into continued use. The problem with this concept is outlined in point one: there are piles of apps. There is always a shiny new toy. What will keep that app on top? Ask Twinkle.
This man is a one stooge hype machine. The internet will continue to grow, as will the mobile app world. But to confuse which will be dominant is to confuse the ant for the elephant.
