Why Smartphone Apps are Trending

This is an era of smart devices, smart phones and smarter people. Smart devices may look small, but they are capable of doing unthinkable tasks. Same is the case with smartphones and smartphone apps; a few years back, it was difficult or even impossible to think that a device that fits well in our palm would be able to do anything we desire. From shopping, to business dealings, to managing the whole business, smartphones have completely changed the way we used to work before.

Image source: http://www.myalarmcenter.com/

It is not something that happened in few hours or days, in fact it took a lot of effort and time of our technical experts to give the world to us on our fingertips. Previously, the smartphone apps were developed just for fun, gaming and entertainment, but when businesses observed the changed user behavior and a huge shift of customers from desktop to mobiles, they also decided to shift the business on a platform filled with customers, i.e. the mobile platform.

Resulting, they gained more profit and popularity and the whole scenario had reached  such a point that in 2015, Google found the need to introduce a new algorithm for optimizing search on mobile devices, i.e. Mobilegeddon.

Statistics and Trends of Mobile App Usage

According to the data given in go-globe.com, there are some interesting facts related to smartphone apps by the year 2015.

1. Mobile apps account for more than half of the time spent on digital media.

2. The below given image is showing that smartphone users spent 89% of their mobile media time using mobile apps, and 42% of all mobile sales generated by the leading 500 merchants came from mobile apps.

Image source: go-globe.com

3. The estimated worldwide mobile app revenue will increase consistently from the year 2014 to 2017. It was 35 billion in 2014 and predicted to rise to 77 billion by 2017.

Image source: go-globe.com

4. Here is the data on mobile app usage by age and number of apps. People of different age groups tend to use a different number of apps on their mobile phone and spend different amounts of time on each. Take a look at the data of different age groups and their average usage.

Image source: go-globe.com

5. Below you can also see the data per the percentage of time spent on mobile apps based on their types.

Image source: go-globe.com

These images are enough to understand how fast the trend of mobile apps is increasing. Now more than 85% of people prefer to use mobile apps to mobile websites.

The trend of smartphone apps is ruling and it is likely to stay here for a long time. Undoubtedly, the mobile applications helped in simplifying people’s lives to a great extent by providing services such as finding a doctor, booking a movie ticket, and finding the way to any unknown destination.

Most Widely Used Mobile Applications in 2015

There are plenty of mobile applications to choose from and the choices are rising constantly. However, there are a few that are liked by people the most. The list of top used mobile applications in America during the year 2015 is given here, provided by time.com. It clearly shows how people like to remain engaged on their smartphones, by devoting most of their surfing time to Facebook, chatting with friends, and listening music.

Image source: time.com

Why Use of Mobile Apps is Increasing Rapidly

There are multiple reasons behind the increasing use of mobile apps, and some of them are mentioned here.

1. Ease of Use: One of the major reasons behind record use of mobile apps is the ease of use. Internet is connected to a device that can be operated from anywhere within the ease of palms. There is no need to carry any extra device.. Even older versions of mobile phones that we used to use have become smarter, and let us access the internet anytime, anywhere.

2. Provide Handheld Solutions: There are a variety of mobile apps developed around different fields, almost everyone can get the solution of his/her niche problems with the help of mobile applications such as checking balance in bank account, booking a cab, or ordering something online.

3. Social Connections: There are apps that are designed to help people stay connected with friends and family either by chatting, photo sharing, newsfeeds and more. These types of applications are running on the top spot in apps ranking.

4.Dedicated Marketplace for App Download: Access to different apps is extremely simple. There is a dedicated platform of downloading apps for every operating system. E.g., Google Play store for Android and iTunes store for iOS.

5.Professional apps like iOffice and Microsoft Office: Apps are highly popular amongst professionals, as well because they can easily serve most of their corporate needs with apps such as iOffice and Microsoft office.

6.Gaming and Entertainment: This is one of the biggest markets of smartphone applications. Gradually, smartphones are becoming the hub for entertainment. Apart from searching any relevant information and using apps to solve a particular purpose, users like to spend a lot of their time on smartphones playing their favorite games, watching videos or movies etc. It is a personal entertainment solution and becoming the favorite of users. 

7.Ease of Creation: As the trend of smartphone apps has grown, simultaneously the need of having more and more apps has grown, and engineers have found a convenient and quick way to develop smartphone application by developing software that can create an app in minutes. This ease of creation has further give a boom to app development.

What the Future Holds

Smartphones have surpassed the usage of other media devices. The average time spent by users on mobile devices has increased a considerable amount more than desktops in the recent years. Take a look at this report, showing the data from smartinsights.com from the years 2008 to 2015.

Image source: smartinsights.com

As the choices of mobile apps are increasing, simultaneously the average time spent by people on mobile devices is also increasing. However, the next big trend of the technological world after mobile applications is going to be Wearable technology. Even so, wearable technology is also somewhat related to mobile apps because the things like wearable cloths and wearable shoes also need to be used along with an app installed on a device or smartphone. So, our dependency is likely to increase even more on mobile apps, and aren’t likely to go anywhere but forward in the foreseeable future.

Some new developments in the mobile app market will take your breath away. One of the latest innovation of the smartphone app market that took place recently - new app uses smartphones to detect earthquakes.