Dear App, It’s Not You, It’s Me

[responsive][/responsive]While smartphones have become ubiquitous (almost 75% of all US adults between 18-54 now own one), close to a third of us don’t download any new apps. And only one in 10 actually pay real money for apps.

According to NPR’s Kelly McEvers evidence suggests that, as a group, smartphone users may be reaching app saturation.

“A survey conducted by Deloitte in the U.K. looked at how many apps people download every month,” McEvers notes in a recent story on NPR. “The number of smartphone users who do not download any apps has jumped more than 10 percent in the past year, to about a third of all users. And nearly 90 percent said they don’t spend any money on apps.”

And while games and social media dominate the apps we do download, discovering new apps is often a challenge.

“Very few new app releases make mainstream news,” writes David Nield in Digital Trends, “while the app stores run by Apple, Google and Amazon can be uninspiring to navigate around. It seems as though most of us are sticking with the names and services we know well rather than experimenting with new software on our mobiles.”

Could be we are buying those smartphones because they are what’s available, and we don’t want to be troglodytes.  Or maybe we are getting tired of staring at those tiny screens all day long. Whatever the reason, the long-term implications on digital marketing and publishing bear watching.