{"id":25,"date":"2014-05-12T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/34.10.140.215\/?p=25"},"modified":"2025-12-04T01:11:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T01:11:49","slug":"app-disaggregations-physical-limit-30-apps-per-device","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/?p=25","title":{"rendered":"App Disaggregation&#8217;s Physical Limit: 30 apps per device"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>eBay Marketplaces:&nbsp;<\/strong>3 apps (Core, Fashion, Motors)<br><strong>Facebook:&nbsp;<\/strong>5&nbsp;apps (Core, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Paper)<br><strong>LinkedIn: <\/strong>3&nbsp;apps (Core, Contacts, Recruiter, and until a few days ago, CardMunch)<br><strong>Google:&nbsp;<\/strong>36 apps (<a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/artist\/google-inc.\/id281956209\">ridiculous<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Across mobile, the companies most serious about mobile are disaggregating their features sets and building new, more focused, apps. There are compelling reasons to split up your apps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Apps get\u00a0<strong>one chance<\/strong> to get key permissions from the user \u2014 push and geo, in particular. With multiple apps, you can ask multiple times, and users might have a clearer understanding of why the permissions are necessary. And if one of a company&#8217;s apps\u00a0annoys users, the users are less likely to\u00a0totally cut out that\u00a0company (by revoking permissions in all apps).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Smartphone screens are small \u2014 even on the largest Android devices. Focused apps can have simpler user interfaces, without hidden features. If a button isn&#8217;t visible, most users will never find it. This is why Facebook removed their slide out navigation panel and why <a href=\"http:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/2014\/05\/07\/venmos-hidden-right-nav\/\">Venmo&#8217;s right nav<\/a>\u00a0surprised me. RedLaser has a left navigation, but we find that users are orders of magnitude less likely to use any features there.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Updates take time on iOS. If you&#8217;re testing new features which might anger customers or be unstable, it&#8217;s better to test in less important apps and eventually roll the best and most stable features into the core experience.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>However, most users don&#8217;t have many apps on their devices: Surveys suggest users&nbsp;have only gone from 31 to 33 apps on their devices over the past five years. (See my data <a href=\"http:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Apps-per-device.xlsx\">here<\/a>.) Moreover, most of these apps are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/bii-report-mobile-gamings-app-store-success-2012-9\">likely games<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Screenshot_5_9_14__2_50_PM.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Screenshot_5_9_14__2_50_PM.png\" alt=\"Average Apps per Device\" class=\"wp-image-1216\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If users&nbsp;don&#8217;t have more apps, who is using these more focused apps? A few hypotheses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Power-users use anything other than the core apps (and maybe Whatsapp). App manufacturers can create power tools for some users without distracting most of their user base.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Apps from powerhouse developers are beating out smaller companies. eBay\/Facebook\/Google\/etc. have a larger share of the install base than they did 4-5 years ago.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>None of the ancillary apps have significant\u00a0install bases. They&#8217;re purely used for experimentation, and all the successful features will be rolled into the core apps.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The cohort of users with smartphones in 2010 might have many more apps installed in 2014 \u2014 but the average is weighted down by new late-adopting smartphone users.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I suspect all these explanations hold a bit of truth. It&#8217;ll be an interesting place to watch \u2014 particularly because discoverability of installed apps becomes a huge issue once users have 100+ apps. I&#8217;m already at the point where any apps off&nbsp;my home screen are&nbsp;accessed via Apple&#8217;s built in search feature or Siri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>eBay Marketplaces:&nbsp;3 apps (Core, Fashion, Motors)Facebook:&nbsp;5&nbsp;apps (Core, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Paper)LinkedIn: 3&nbsp;apps (Core, Contacts, Recruiter, and until a few days ago, CardMunch)Google:&nbsp;36 apps (ridiculous) Across mobile, the companies most serious about mobile are disaggregating their features sets and building new, more focused, apps. There are compelling reasons to split up your apps: However, most users [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesskorpen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}