Will Mobile Apps Matter beyond 2020?

Summary:

No, mobile apps will lose their significance beyond some years. Routine services will be replaced by some sort of aggregator like super apps assistance, bots and Virtual Assistants, while more complex ones will probably either remain as they are now or be streamed to the user's device. This new way of getting things done will have profound effects on the industry. Read further to understand the transition...

Problem Statement: THE APP GAP

Windows Phone has been struggling with it since the beginning. Firefox OS, blackberry OS, webOS, Symbian and all the other iOS and Android competitors have all failed at least in part because of APP GAP.

Without users nobody wants to develop an app for a new platform. Without apps nobody wants to use a new platform.

This is like a chicken & an egg problem!!!

Pretty much everything one does on their smartphone right now is through an app. Social conversations are through Facebook, WhatsApp, Snap chat, news is being browsed through Newspaper Apps, and Video is streamed using YouTube and Netflix apps. No one likes using YouTube on the phone's browser.

Back in the 1990’s every company figured out that they have to have a website. In the 2010’s everyone figured they need their own app. 

Apps have become the default way to get things done these days on the mobile device, but after 2020s or even to 2030s? Will apps remain the one true way to do everything?

I doubt!!! Apps are actually quite a hassle to both users and developers. 

Each user requires an app to be found, downloaded and installed and then each app looks and acts differently. So each app has a learning curve. They also use up the phone storage, RAM and other resources and even a spot on the valuable home screen. Sure these are all small problems but they are kind of annoying. Imagine “An user turning on the flashlight and ordering a pizza without having to go through the hassle of getting a whole new app”. Would be so easy right?

On the other hand designing, developing and constantly maintaining an app is a lot of work to sure some companies like Facebook or game producers. These companies make money directly from users using their app but most companies just have the apps as an interface between the company and the customers. If it’s an airline app, people buy tickets, if it’s an Uber, people take rides. That interface between companies and customer is necessary. 

But what if the interface didn't have to be a designated app? If one app could sell air tickets and support Uber ride without the user having to spend time operating separate interfaces, and the app creators not having to develop multiple apps, both parties would be more than happy.

Since apps are hassle to both the sides, surely there should be a better solution in the future.

I can see four distinct possibilities: -

1)  Super Applications (Least revolutionary one):  is already happening but one might not have noticed it yet. Of course apps that combine features from tons of other apps. The best example of this would be WeChat and to some extent Facebook. WeChat started out as a messaging app in China but has transformed into the biggest super application in the world with over 800 million users. On top of messaging, social media WeChat works as a digital wallet allowing users to send and receive money online, pay for things in the real world like one would use Apple pay in a grocery store. The app has an e-commerce platform and a customer service platform built-in and users can book flights and bus tickets, call a taxi, pay bills and do just about everything imaginable through it. Suddenly a user can make transfers without using the PayPal app, call a taxi without opening the Uber app and so on, and these replacements are already happening.

2) Chat-Bots: The second method I can think of is a little bit more futuristic and yet it sounds like a bad joke from the early 2000s. It’s the CHAT-BOT. I know they usually suck but with a little bit of help from artificial intelligence they should soon change. Microsoft is betting big on bots and if one opens a newer version of Skype, one can find a whole list of them and some of them want to replace our apps. The sky scanner app for example is my favorite place to find cheap flight tickets and believe it or not they have a Skype bot. I can simply type in dates and destinations and it will show me flights that I can interact with. There's also a UPS Bot that helps you track packages and a Bot for meme creation that you know creates memes that's all pretty basic for now. But bots on Skype just came into existence and it's not hard to see how they could eventually replace a lot of the apps.  Facebook is apparently also working on bots inside messenger.     

3) Virtual Assistants: The third and most advanced method is through virtual assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana and Alexa . They’re essentially just more universal and more advanced chat bots. If you think about it they can already do things like searching the web, finding new restaurants nearby, identifying the song that is playing on the radio, calling you an Uber, controlling your Philips hue light bulbs or your speakers. Some like Amazon's Alexa are connected to one’s credit card, so they can even make purchases right away. Those are all things one previously needed dedicated apps. One by one, feature-by-feature these assistants are making those apps redundant. Of course some apps can't easily be replaced by the above three methods such as games and professional applications like Photoshop and MS Office. I would love to live in the future where I can just tell Cortana or Google Assistant to edit my videos and then return in half an hour, but that's still a few years ahead.  

4) Streaming Apps/ Instant Apps: I believe for apps and programs like Photoshop and MS Office which will continue to be standalone, there will be improved streaming services. NVidia Stream Xbox PlayStation and many others are already offering some sort of game streaming to Laptops and Phones. For ex. HP enables users to run classic win32 desktop applications on its Elite X3 Phone by having them streamed from an HP server. Another example would be Android working on Instant apps, where all Android Apps will work on Chrome browser. So one can actually use Photoshop on their phone with Internet connections. Improving streaming apps should eventually become a pretty good experience. This means that even those complex apps and programs could run on just about anything, even hardware that they weren't specifically written for. 

Impact on Industry

As the above possibilities kick in, many developers won't spend their time developing their own apps. Instead will work on feeding information through API's into other aggregator services like the Google assistant. On top of today’s classic optimizations like improving apps position in the App Store and website's ranking in a Google search, developers of the future will also optimize their services for Virtual Assistants or Chat bots.  

This will be the real competitive advantage after all when the user invokes the Virtual Assistants to call a cab; the service with the best integration for the Virtual Assistant will be the one to get the cab. After all, this is both great and terrifying for service providers. Complexity will be significantly reduced for service providers because they won't have to maintain a whole app, of course but this convenience comes at the cost of freedom.

Few Companies will become Superpowers

How can few companies become super powers when there is so much competition? Here it is…

·     Skype can decide whether it lets Sky scanner BOT into their app or not. Skype can also decide how it ranks different BOTS and what features these BOTS can provide.

·     Google Virtual Assistant pretty much can decide which are the best Mexican restaurants in your vicinity when you ask it.

All the power is going into the hands of these aggregators. Service providers have to optimize for them, pay them for better ranking and communicate with users through them, which will make these aggregators incredibly influential.

This transition will also mean that the app gap won't really matter anymore. Because the number of apps that are present on a platform won't be the deciding factor in how many services the user can access.

Instead the question will be boiling down to capability of chat BOTS or the virtual assistants or the super applications with app streaming capabilities.

The service, which can tap into delivering the best user experience, will be the winner, which can be “THE END” for mobile apps.