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ComScore: 13% of users download 50% of all apps

Although the data would appear to indicate that the app market is shrinking, it's more likely that many more casual users are coming aboard.

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Published onSeptember 16, 2016

The app market is certainly a growing one, but it’s difficult to stand out when there are so many aggressive developers out there. What’s more is that recent data from comScore’s mobile app report reveals that only thirteen percent of smartphone owners are responsible for half of all total app download.

This information comes from a three-month survey that came to a conclusion in June 2016. It would seem to indicate that people just aren’t downloading apps at the same rate that they once did. In fact, about 49 percent of the surveyed smartphone users didn’t even download a single app during the time frame.

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While this might seem like sobering news for app developers, it may not be the case. Smartphones are used by practically everyone these days, many of whom weren’t interested in the latest apps or games to begin with. They use their devices in essentially the same way that they might have used a Nokia brick back in the day. If it comes with Snake, they might play Snake. But other than that, they don’t care.

The people who previously downloaded are still downloading them; casual users are just constituting an increasingly larger portion of the smartphone userbase worldwide as the technology becomes more and more ubiquitous.

The portion of the population that actually is interested in apps downloads an average of 3.5 per month.

What are your thoughts regarding this latest data about app usage? Is the market in decline, or is it just becoming a different sort of landscape? Let us know your take in the comments below!