Wednesday 30 May 2012

IPHONE APP DOWNLOADS on the decline

Predicting trends is a difficult thing to do, mathematically speaking there are many factors if you want to find the outcome of any race. Weather its technology or an actual horse race, there are many details you have to study and see the running history of. Prediction is like most things, its done to prepare for the future.

I'd want know if my weekend is gonna be rained out before I go camping, or to see if that gorgeous woman is really smiling at me before I pull out my best chat-up line and get a reaction.
Things are in a permanent Schrodingers cat like condition before you get to see the outcome. That's why marketeers love statistics and pie charts and predictions.

I am not suggestion to pull out a pie chart to win favours from a hot girl at the local dance and drink. I tried that and got the opposite reaction for all my efforts in power point presentation. Instead learn from history and predict the future.

One trend I been looking at recently is to predicted the future of smart Phone Applications, by seeing the download history. Its fair to say that things are  declining.  Since April the  Fiksu, Inc have reported a 4.9% drop from 6.79 million downloads to 4.23 million. What does this mean?, well a dramatic drop like that usually spells doom in my book, but news that Apple have a more strict policy on bots and automatic downloading.
Making it difficult for App developers to boost their ranking in the charts by relying on real figures for downloads.
The numbers are still going down and cant really say for sure the use of bots by developers have corrupted the download charts. But from my own perspective, I think the hundreds of apps I look at I hardly use a few at a time. Maybe Apps are like little toys and that when we use them we soon get bored and leave them alone on our increasingly growing home screen filled with more useless Apps. A photography app with ability to twitter or face book your ugly face to a bunch of  people you hardly know about. Except for typing Happy birthday every year and the odd like to their silly gibbering status.

I like to think when I update my status or post things out, there is an army of people looking at how ridicules the whole thing is. Expensive app like a gps or Sling box seemed good at the time but how often do I load that up to watch TV or find the route to the city?. I have to say I am reducing my app intake, maybe its the summer and I don't want to play a silly game on the phone. The screen cant be seen in broad daylight anyway. In fact I go virtual window shopping with my EBay app and dont have the need to walk aimlessly to the shops.
I hope the download charts are reflecting on the fact apps are not really that interesting in the long term and it's really a 5 minuet distraction. The reduction of downloads might continue to a slow trickle and that there wont be a need for phone app developers. I hope someday I can just use my phone for calls and alerts. but till then, it is a great way to spend your time hanging around waiting in a que for the next FAD or TREND...

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