Hacker News Reader

Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

> I don't even bother installing apps anymore, I don't have time to research whether or not they are going to abuse my privacy or have some horrendous TOS.

I'm going out on a limb but I'd wager you're not exactly representative of the general userbase for which apps are developed.

View on HN

A few years ago, Flipkart was the leading e-commerce portal in India, and Amazon was a poor third, behind Snapdeal[1]. At some point in March 2015, Flipkart (and their fashion portal, Myntra) decided to go "app-only" on mobile[2], i.e., if you went to their website using a mobile browser, you would get shown a large interstitial to install their app, and nothing else. There was no option to proceed with their mobile website. Flipkart also gave away exclusive discounts for people downloading their app.

People rebelled. A lot of people rebelled. No one wanted to install their app to comparison shop. People just went to the Amazon site and bought whatever they wanted, knowing that at most, there would be a minor difference in price. Shopping on Amazon's site using a mobile browser was a breeze compared to Flipkart. The whole app-only strategy was a disaster.[3]

Flipkart admitted their mistake[4], and decided to re-instate their mobile website in November the same year. But the damage had been done. By August 2016, Flipkart had lost its leading place in the Indian e-commerce space to Amazon[5]. They never recovered, and to this day, they're still playing catch-up.

Not everything in the entire debacle can be attributed to Flipkart's app-only strategy. Undoubtedly, there are others aspects - like Amazon's prime being better than Flipkart's version, etc. But the app-only strategy definitely contributed significantly to Flipkart's uncrowning, and provided Amazon the much-needed entry point to becoming the market leader.

1. https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/flipkart...

2. https://www.livemint.com/Industry/J9VeQxowSOlHU8ZMUParUL/Fli...

3. https://www.techinasia.com/flipkart-myntra-app-only-disaster

4. https://trak.in/tags/business/2015/11/10/flipkart-u-turn-mob...

5. https://www.livemint.com/Companies/c6vY9ta120G7cwewrCg6bI/Ha...

On a positive note, imo they have the best e-commerce PWA now. I recommend taking a look on mobile.

Very interesting story. I must remember to ask my Indian colleagues about this

As a heavy user of Myntra's app, I also have to say that their app is one of the biggest reasons why I keep coming back to them. The app is wonderfully designed, highly functional, and fast. The UX is uniform and the filtering options are top notch. Far better than anything the competition can offer

HN users represent < 1% of the userbase. But people often ask their opinions on tech products, so it is hard to claim whether they matter or not.

Do they ask their opinion? No one asks my opinion on software/hardware and I'm the only software engineer anyone in my milieu knows at all. But even setting aside how we evaluate the anecdotes that usually warrant that claim, as far as impact goes, HN users generally sport middle class backgrounds or better; the larger population has neither met nor really considers the opinions of a software engineer and typically mobile apps, and ones which don't have their user's best interests in mind, are lowest common denominator for a target since they're interested in reaping as much information as possible. It seems easier for a layman to just install whatever apps on their phone than to consider fielding an educated opinion. HN users may just like the idea of appearing important

If you slice the demographic data finely enough, everyone is a member of a tiny minority.

My non-technical retired mom also only uses about ten apps, for basically the same reasons, although she doesn't have the vocabulary and jargon we have to succinctly explain the same concepts. AFAIK its the same for my wife, aunt, and sister (different people, LOL) who mostly use Facebook app, being middle aged women.

I think it's representative of the average user a couple years down the road, as is often the case.

Most people don't know how to unsubscribe from mailing lists... that have mandatory unsubscribe footers.

HN users are far from representative.

The question is not whether or not HN users' decision processes aare representative, but whether or not the end results are.

App adoption and use, overall, is low.

Consumers Spend 85% Of Time On Smartphones In Apps, But Only 5 Apps See Heavy Use https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/22/consumers-spend-85-of-time...

App Download and Usage Statistics (2018)

The total number of mobile app downloads in 2017 – 197 billion (a forecast)

That's an average of about 50/user, with an 80%+ abandonment rate, and a median all but certainly far lower.

How many Android apps are there now? Well, by June of 2017 it reached 3 million Android app mark! The current rate of its growth is more than 1,300 apps a day.

This is not a good thing.

..despite the sea of choice for mobile apps available for both iOS and Android, in real life people tend to use on a daily basis only a few. Here is how much exactly – 10 apps a day on average or 30 apps on monthly basis.

http://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-statistics/

77 percent of users never use an app again 72 hours after installing

https://www.androidauthority.com/77-percent-users-dont-use-a...

How Many Apps Do Smartphone Owners Use? Most apps are not even retained for a full day

A Localytics survey, conducted by Research Now in October 2015, reports that 49% of US smartphone app users use six to 10 smartphone apps each week.

https://www.emarketer.com/Article/How-Many-Apps-Do-Smartphon...

New data shows losing 80% of mobile users is normal, and why the best apps do better

https://andrewchen.co/new-data-shows-why-losing-80-of-your-m...

The more time I spend working with studies and research data, the more I'm starting to realize that a lot of it [numbers] is complete and utter nonsense.

197 billion app downloads? You don't have to be a researcher to know that the number is a "little" far-fetched. And maybe I'm delusional to the fact that might be possible. After all, I have only ever used Android and only with the default apps it comes packaged with. Other than the exception for WhatsApp and Messenger.

But honestly, in the markets that I work with, I see such blown up statistics that it makes me throw up on the inside. E.g. In 2018, 20% of all web searches are done using voice (assistant, Siri, smart speakers, etc.), and by 2020 that number is "going to be 50%".

Holy macaroni... I can already picture the dystopian reality where people walk around airports all talking to their phones just to look something up.

All that aside, mobile apps suck! I prefer a well-designed mobile website over an app at any time of the day.

>197 billion app downloads? You don't have to be a researcher to know that the number is a "little" far-fetched.

Is it? I'm a highly technical user, CS degree and all, 20 years experience, and I still downloaded around 20-25 apps last year. Of those, I kept like 4-5 on the phone, but the downloads are still there.

~3 billion * 20 = 60 billion app downloads already. And younger people are not as mission driven ("need to find an app for a specific task") and picky as me. Add to that casual apps and games, where people can download a new one every week (I rarely play games).

>But honestly, in the markets that I work with, I see such blown up statistics that it makes me throw up on the inside. E.g. In 2018, 20% of all web searches are done using voice (assistant, Siri, smart speakers, etc.), and by 2020 that number is "going to be 50%".

Yeah, that sounds like just BS PR from from SEO article pushing for some voice related product or service. Absolutely there are those too.

Well, I have over 40 non-Google apps, and I had to download them all again when I got a new phone last year (which I rarely do, but many switch every couple of years). And I probably downloaded and uninstalled 8 or 10 more - when I want do do something new, I often try a bunch of apps before settling on one. Also, some apps follow the model of using a "virtual app" as a key to unlock paid features, so that's two downloads for a single app.

Every update to an app also counts as a new download.

well according to the article Google Store app numbers peaked in early 2018 so it might not be as unrepresentative as you think. Time is a zero sum game and there are only so many apps all of us can install no matter how enthusiastic we are.

I was curious about that so I followed through the link and saw there was a jump down of a million, and upon googling it, it seems that Google did a purge this spring. It doesn't have to do with users or developers but just Google doing a clean-up.

https://bgr.com/2017/02/09/google-play-store-app-privacy-pur...

My grandma stopped installing apps for the same reason. Consumer behavior is changing.

I would take that even further and venture a guess that 99% of HN readers are not representative of the intended general userbase of 99% of the apps for ios/android.

My personal guess is even more far-fetched but I think the ratio between useful and useless native apps reached 1/100 very, VERY fast after the industry successfully implemented wiring money as a feature. That was the one thing, even bigger than successfully implementing ads.

> 99% of HN readers are not representative of the intended general userbase of 99% of the apps for ios/android.

Not that I agreed with the website vs. app debate, but with all respect, that "userbase of 99% of the apps" was likely made up by those people who would also begs for bigger keyboard on their phones so they can send SMS a bit faster back in 2006.

This comment implies (like Fords: "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd say better horses") that this 99% of customers are some backwards dwelling people who don't know the way forward (in your example, the no-keyboard touch screen).

But webapps are not some novel development they're not aware of. They are what existed before apps and during apps, and exists still, and people still spend most of their time on mobile apps.

People will spend their time on anything they feel useful to them, not the "mobile app".

I think you've been mislead by the current situation where everybody is using apps on their phone. But really, the "mobile app" it's just another thing that is attractive to them.

If you lock somebody in a room with only a TV inside, eventually that person will turn on the TV and start watching, even the TV only plays China Central Television channel one (FYI: It's boring like hell).

It's basically the same effect, the only twist here is that people chose to be addicted to their phones.

Don't let that effect blind you :)

As a side note, 99% of the statistics are made up, including this very sentence.

And 9 out of 10 concerns are unfounded, so don't worry about it.

Also called the Malkovich Bias.

I disagree with the 99% estimate, I too take the same approach, and recommend the same to those who will listen. I would venture that number to be at least 80%

So you are saying that out of the 3B smart phone users in the world 600M will never install a app ever because they fear the abuse of their privacy or some horrendous TOS?

Yeah, no!

I think your intuitive judgement failed you here

A non trivial number of people don’t realize you can install apps. I know several non tech 65+ iPhone users the vast majority don’t use any app not installed on the phone.

Young kids seem to install apps all the time, but parents quickly learn not to let them spend any money on in app purchasing.

>A non trivial number of people don’t realize you can install apps. I know several non tech 65+ iPhone users the vast majority don’t use any app not installed on the phone.

Those don't matter much for the concerns of TFA, as they're unlikely to use some new fangled web app either...

The claim isn't never--it's for installing a small set of apps that you don't change for more or less the entire lifetime of your device.

Yes. Lurking around the app store of your device and installing random apps is a behavior for first-time users of the platform. Back during 2010 to 2015, almost everyone was a first-time user of the platform. From now on, downloading random apps is a job for ever younger audiences.

Crikey. I'm 48, a developer and I still install random apps.

Yes, I see and it's not binary like there's people who download random apps or not and there's people who are young or not, it's just that the numbers are clearly going in specific directions really fast.

I just bought a new iPad and one of the first things I looked for was apps that utilize the AR frameworks etc. if you are just gonna stick to the web it’s hard to take advantage the full power of your new device.

Yes because it's new and awesome and I'll probably do the same when I get an AR compatible device but it's not the reason we get the device. We get the device to install the apps we already like because we have stuff to do that we already started. Mostly. But especially for older audiences.

Older audiences tend to get replaced by younger ones.

Perhaps not privacy but the average user might be aware of losing a little battery life for each new installed app.

Luckily this is really not a problem in practice on iOS. Main reason I switched after years of frustration with Android. I use a ton of apps and the worst offender for background use is Hangouts of all things (I guess not surprisingly). So I guess I’m giving up a little bit of battery life but it’s really just one poorly designed app (I do not use hangouts nearly enough to justify its share of background draw)

do you know the origin of this? I suppose from the film "being john Malkovich"...

True, but that implies that someone here is after the money of these users, rather than educating them and providing them with the best (safest) options.

On the other hand HN users influence is much greater than their numbers because many of them are doing tech support for family and tech advice for friends.

I used to do that a bit in the past, but not even my completely technologically illiterate father asks me anything anymore since he got an iPad.

While he is not the type to install new apps, all my friends are, and never ask me for any advice.

Anecdotal, but I think HN users do not have all the power you think they have.

You could also say their influence is greater because they are the ones writing the apps in the first place.

A tiny fraction of the people writing apps.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com