'Appy to jump on the bandwagon

‘Appy to jump on the bandwagon

Will everyone stop pretending like mobile apps are the next best thing after sliced bread? Kipp’s tired of the constant drivel on the issue.

May 12, 2011 1:39 by Eva Fernandes

If there is something young Kipp, teenage Kipp and old cynical journalist Kipp hates, it is jumping on the bandwagon. And when it comes to the press, you know precisely what Kipp is on about.

For instance, do you remember the dot com boom? The word that was on everyone’s lips was “e-commerce.”

“This is the future,” they’d claim. “Let’s invest oodles and oodles of money in it.” Until a couple of years into the beginning of the third millennium, it all came crashing down. Then, as any avid observer of The Social Network and indeed of our times will note, there was and continues to be the “social networking” boom. Everyone everywhere is cashing in on the new phenomenon of the media that will change the way society functions indefinitely. Don’t get Kipp started on the matter, we’ve written about how Twitter and Facebook are overvalued and overhyped business models to begin with.

And now, given that this month Kipp is focusing on mobile technologies, we bring you the over hyped world of apps, and the ‘appy’ puns that come along with it. This brings us to the very article that brought on this Kipp fit of rage: “All go on planet of the apps” (witty title guys.)

The article, pegging nicely to the Planet of the Apps and the launch of the first official Blackberry app store in the UAE, is an analysis of the popularity of ‘apps’ in the region. It features one particular Raghu Venkataraman, who is the chief strategy and investments officer at du, who, coincidentally, spoke at last month’s Planet of the Apps. Our dear friend Venkataraman claims that he and his family have about 400 apps on which they spent a total of Dh2,900 on.

“I’ve gone app crazy” Venkataraman happily declares as if this is something to be proud of it. How someone manages to spend more than Dh2,900 on apps, is really beyond Kipp, more so when we discover more than half of them were free to download. Kipp’s willing to dismiss ‘appily crazy Venkataraman as an anomaly, but not the bandwagon jumping press.

Take for instance this article titled “Woman sentenced for forging iPhone application” from Emirates 24|7. Interesting article, you find yourself thinking? Misleading is more like it: the article is not a mobile app “application” but an actual physical application form that was forged.

And while others seem all too ready to embrace the business of apps as a substantial part of our financial future, Kipp can’t help but remember the results of those studies which show that people really don’t use apps. Consider the results of a study conducted by iPhone analytics firm Pinch Media which found that the majority of people stop using apps the very day after they download them.

Three amusing facts from the survey:

“Fact #1: With free apps, a whopping 80 per cent of people abandon their selections the day after their first interaction.

Fact #2: When it comes to paid apps, less than a third of users go back for more the following day.

Fact #3: Only 1 per cent of people end up developing a long-term usage relationship with any given app. Instead, most tend to lose interest after only a few minutes.”

So there you go people, do you still think Kipp a raving ball of fury for getting annoyed with the over-hyped, over-valued and over-reported world of apps? Or do you secretly agree with us?