Majority of U.S. consumers still download zero apps per month, says comScore | Hacker News Reader

Majority of U.S. consumers still download zero apps per month, says comScore

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51 pointsmcone38 comments

It may be just me, but every time I download an app I have a feeling that I'm signing in into something that will do whatever it wants on my phone - geolocation, read address book, access the internet? for what?

And then, you know, there are these things called "websites" that you access using a single app called "browser" that end up being pretty useful even on your phone.

Pretty sure that's how most app conception begins. How can they gather as much user data as possible, or as many videos micropayments as possible.

I think that most apps only exist so that some company can get a tracking device onto your phone.

Permission systems are fairly good in both Android and iOS now, though.

Note: I agree that protecting your data is important, I don't want to downplay that.

The problem is not that permissions are pretty good. The problem is that you have to give many apps way too many permissions to work.

Let's make an example; I use the FitBit tracker and quite like it. I also use its own Android app. A few months ago, they decided that in order to sync you need to enable GPS. Now, there is no reason on Earth why I need to turn on GPS to download data from my watch and upload it to FitBit's server. Still, no permission or GPS disabled = no sync.

Frankly, I do not think this is in my best interest. And I wonder how many of their user-base noticed the change of permissions.

No, the situation is "take it or leave it". Give all the permissions, or don't get to use the app. There are now even web sites (facebook, google maps, yahoo email) that seem to refuse service if you are determined to be on a phone. They demand that you install their app instead.

Proper permissions would have 4 possible settings:

1. ask (the default), with checkbox to make the choice stick

2. deny

3. allow

4. deceive the app, pretending to allow.

That last one is important. It keeps apps from forcing users to allow absurd permissions. Deception plug-ins should be possible, allowing various kinds of deception (like "oh, sorry, there is no signal") and even man-in-the-middle against the apps.

I'm writing an article about this, doing research now, trying to correlate battery usage on a device with how many apps are installed on it, and user use.

If the user isn't using the device, and the more apps on it, the faster the battery drains, it's transmitting something somewhere to someone...

Your claim is that random 3rd party apps are transmitting unknown data while the apps are closed and the phone is not in use?

This is exactly why I don't download apps. I proxied my phone one day and almost fell out of my chair. I'm shocked Google and Apple allow this to go on.

What was the most unexpected thing you found?

I was under the impression that mitmproxy is no longer effective with iOS's mandatory pinned certificates. How did you manage to intercept traffic?

iOS' App Transport Security is friendly to researchers that install their own CA.

Android Nougat is much worse in this regard: Apps disrespect any user-added CAs, which really doesn't contribute to Android's security level but makes checking what your apps send home a huge PITA.

You are, at least, thinking about it. Way ahead of the game.

Most phone users have no reason to download apps, and most app publishers are clueless about providing a reason, or even awareness their apps exist, beyond uploading them and hoping.

The nature of apps skews these numbers. So few apps are either worthy of a user's time, or awareness, that these low averages are not informative about apps that are worthy. It's more obvious for Web sites. Your blog is outdated, unmaintained, and obscure. So it gets no hits. Nobody is surprised. But that says nothing about Web sites that do contend for user awareness. Same for apps.

An iOS app can't access anything significantly different than a website can, unless you give it permissions to.

I can't speak for iOS but many Android apps I've used always ask for crazy permissions and then refuse to work unless I say yes.

My biggest fear, as silly as this may sound, is an app that wants my phone book will contact the people in that phone book for some reason. For example, to tell them that I'm a possible person to add to their Derpchat friends list. My phone book is a useless listing of past professional, personal, and educational contacts whom I don't have a relationship with anymore. I have no idea how it gets auto filled with 99% people I don't want in there but I just don't trust it. I'm afraid I'll accidentally ping someone from my past.

So delete your contacts, and keep them in something else such as a simple document.

I download zero apps per month because existing apps have trained me to believe that most "free" apps are actually user-hostile scams trying to trick you into spending far more on in-app purchases than you ever would on an app, and most paid apps still contain ads (or worse, requests that I advertise the app to my friends).

But hey, that's the best way to drive up short-term profits.

This isn't 2010, when US smartphone adoption was growing exponentially and the "app economy" was in full swing. The majority of smartphone owners have had phones for a few years now and know exactly which apps they need on a daily basis, be it messaging, social media, games, note-taking, nutrition, transportation, etc.

For everything else mobile websites are more than good enough to cover their needs I imagine.

"The data almost makes it seem like there’s not much point in trying to build new apps for anyone but millennials, as they’re the only group showing serious interest in downloading more, a willingness to pay, and the ability to adopt a new app at scale."

Or perhaps since it's ofentimes millennials who are building the apps they don't understand the needs and desires of older users and as such are missing a huge opportunity.

anecdotal experience with my parents is that they don't tend to download new apps unless their children or grandchildren convince them to. that and they don't just browse the app store anyway.

anecdotal experience with my parents is that they're not really sure what apps they would want, if any.

Hell, neither do I. I essentially have every app I "need". A browser, a music player, a podcast player, some IM clients, a train notifier and banking apps.

Why would I ever need anything else except like, games or something but I have 0 patience for them on mobile unless you can get in and out fast.

I am old but quite computer literate. I've done the whole app thing. However, for the past few years, I've installed no apps. The only apps installed are those that are default.

Beside my banking apps and Alaska Airlines, I don't have any other apps that didn't otherwise come with my phone. I just don't have a need, and I think there are quite a few other people who use their phone in a similar way.

I work for comScore, on one of their major applications with this data and others.

We are always hiring and need many more engineers. Most of the work is .NET, but 30-40% is other languages. As you can tell, we have large data teams, dealing in a multiple of quadrillion records. Free snacks, nice open floor plan and good benefits.

Our President is also doing good things to move the company forward and being very open with his employees.

>Free snacks, nice open floor plan

Why do companies think either of these things are a selling point?

Why would you once have all the apps you need?

This is essentially it. Once you've been there, done that, you're just left with reinventions of the wheel and rubbish "App of the Month" clones.

(I'm generalizing of course)

Also, my idiotic 16gb Android phone is almost always full (thanks to the OS keeping loads of garbage and leftovers from previous versions, according to google searches). On top of that, every time I plug in the phone on WiFi, all these apps start their regular updates (how often do they need to be updated??).

Thus, I need to be very careful with what apps I have, and constantly trim them. I guess that with a new phone this wouldn't be the case, but heck mine is less than 2yrs old and runs fine.

I am also stuck on a 16GB phone (an iPhone in this case) and thus I also simply don't have the space for new apps.

try removing big storage hogs. it's also liberating to have less apps on phone :)

Let's not forget the apps that store locally hundreds of megabytes of cached data (one of the reasons I removed the Facebook app) and those that refuse to store images and videos on an external SD card (WhatsApp)

SDCard has security implications (you cannot currently protect them with permissions, for example), which means that any other app could read it.

But then there's encryption... so not sure why they wouldn't do it

I have a 4GB Android phone, an original Moto E. Simply updating the phone left it full without anything adding any applications to it. It left it unable to be updated without clearing the cache of everything on the phone every time.

Luckily Motorola supported rooting the phone, which made CyanogenMod easily installable at the time. That fixed the update problems and even allowed me to transfer applications to an external SD Card if I wanted (I do not recommend this for any SD Card slower than a UHS SD Card). It now has LineageOS on it, as that is what replaced CyanogenMod when it ceased to be supported. Works great, although the phone itself may be a bit slow.

That was my first thought as well. I use a phone a lot, but only for a finite number of things, and I have pretty good apps for all of those things. Therefore, I download an average of less than one new app a month.

If I download a new app it is either a) a client for a SaaS thing that I already use at home or work, or b) an app that enables me to do something new with my phone (e.g. Sleep as Android for sleep monitoring).

If I played games on my phone, then I might want to download new games semi-regularly, I guess.

The issue here is that the "99 cents from the App Store" model was always a broken way to fund software development.

"The issue here is that the "99 cents from the App Store" model was always a broken way to fund software development."

This is one of the things that bothers me. It doesn't work for you and i, but must be working for some other people. Might be a generational thing. Might be more tech-focused people need less of that, or something.

Furthermore I rarely use most of the apps I do have. I update them even more rarely, after more than one experience of being burned by the developer breaking things that were good. (Add new things that suck all you want, but don't break existing things that are good!)

I've reached app saturation. I already have apps to do all the things I use my phone for. Really new use cases don't come around often.

Apps to do what? How many people do more with their phone than make calls and check social networks?

Every time I see the badge on iOS that tells me how many apps need to be updated, I delete apps I haven't used recently. All my apps on my phone fit on one page, no folders.

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