

The Web Is Dying; Apps Are Killing It - personjerry
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-web-is-dying-apps-are-killing-it-1416169934

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SiVal
Just yesterday, I was reading about the theory of "Peak App", which is based
on surveys of leading app publishers showing that being #N in Apple's App
Store (for very high-ranking N) means _significantly_ less money than being #N
in the App Store just two years ago.

Though the overall sales in the app stores (Apple and Google) are still
increasing, they are increasing much more slowly than the number of available
apps, and developers are able to charge less today than in the past for each
app, resulting in a situation where the vast majority of apps just aren't
worth building as products in themselves. Fewer and fewer people are buying
their first phone, and first phone buyers are the main buyers of apps. People
on their third phone don't do much shopping for new and interesting apps. They
just use what they've been using--the apps that came with the phone plus a
handful of other standards from, say, Google, Facebook, and Twitter--and
beyond that they don't care.

It's getting to the point where the only reason to develop a new commercial
app (as opposed to a personal project) will be as a component in a business
that sells things other than apps. If you are trying to build a business
selling apps (including in-app purchases of upgrades and add-ons), your
chances of success are falling fast.

So, apps are not only "killing the Web", they are in that same sense killing
themselves.

What's really dying here is just the potential for most people to make a
fortune building websites or phone apps as competition drives it toward
ordinary compensation for ordinary work.

~~~
porter
This should be in every econ 101 textbook.

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softdev12
This is behind a paywall. The main points are the following:

1) It's now 86 to 14 percent of phone time for apps vs web. 2) App stores
(controlled by Apple/Google) take big fees and make the world much less open.
3) Lists on the stores drive adoption. 4) Search in the stores are broken. 5)
Market dominance is bad for innovation and consumers

~~~
pohl
86 to 14...I wonder where my time reading web pages in my Twitter and FB apps
— and Reeder — account towards.

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personjerry
This article sounded worrying at first, but it's not that bad.

Most people, consumers, don't necessarily desire the "open-ness" of the
Internet, but rather the usefulness of the tools made by corporations which
happen to have been delivered over the Internet. Indeed, this would be why
those corporations are so big. So technically, consumers win.

The problem is we (hackers) don't like to hear this. We want to believe in the
era where a startup like Instagram can thrive. But it's not like the Internet
is going to become dysfunctional. Rather, if the web is indeed dying, it will
regress to a state where only the "counter-culture" kind of people use it. For
most people, it's easier to just use apps anyway, and that's fine.

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Ashwinning
An article talking about the "walled garden" of app stores, behind a paywall.
Classic.

~~~
cylinder
Those are not the same thing.

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doctorshady
It's strange, you'd think almost the opposite would be true. Maybe it's just a
matter of who you talk to, but I've heard a lot of people frustrated with
companies trying to force feed them apps.

~~~
tracker1
Funny, when Facebook force Messenger as a separate app, I uninstalled both...
I'm using the web interface now, and though not great, isn't bad. As a result,
I'm using facebook less, and the more emails I get from them, the less I want
to use facebook. I can only speak for myself though.

I'm really hoping that more companies do spend time on their mobile
sites/interfaces... because I can't be the only one that's starting to abandon
the spyware apps in favor of mobile web.

~~~
personjerry
Hey I do this too! Glad to see I'm not the only one who hated how they forced
their users to download another app.

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adam419
Non-paywalled link:

[http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-web-is-dying-apps-are-
kil...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-web-is-dying-apps-are-killing-
it-1416169934)

~~~
Bahamut
Still paywalled on mobile.

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amrtnz
Is there any way to read this without a WSJ account?

~~~
symlinkk
Yes, if you're referred from Google it lets you read the whole thing. So just
Google the title of the article and click on the first link.

~~~
mychaelangelo
good tip - this link worked fine for me
[https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web...](https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fthe-
web-is-dying-apps-are-killing-
it-1416169934&ei=RBFrVLe5GsTlatGagsgJ&usg=AFQjCNH_GRuh0Lrw6Rhq61CxrJT0JdVM4Q&bvm=bv.79908130,d.ZWU&cad=rja)

