I have always liked “numbers”, big ones.Sometimes they may be a little strange like how many chickens does Chick-Fil-A sell each year or how many cattle does it take to supply McDonalds?
So, at least one of the things I like about the subject of Mobile App development, other than my professional interest (Staffing Software) are the unbelievable numbers. Amazing numbers!
Before you can have a mobile App, you need to have a mobile device and, of course, an infrastructure to support it.But mobile device development has also been amazing! Although there are other mobile devices that can run Apps (tablets, small laptops, etc.) the most significant mobile device is the Smartphone.
In 2011 35% of Americans owned one and in 2021 85% of Americans owned one. Among Americans ages 16-29,96% have one! In October of 2019 NPR reported that 53% of American children “own a smartphone by the age of 11”. (How do you keep your children safe from the negative effects of internet access with those numbers?)
Today, worldwide, there are almost 6.4 billion smartphones which translates to 80.63% of the world’s population.Certainly,contributing to that growth are the millions of Mobile Apps that can run on them. The more advanced the devices become, the more and better apps can be developed. Both have developed together in a clear symbiotic relationship.
The Apple App Store opened in 2008 with 500 Apps and just 9 years later its store was offering 2.2 million of them. The Google Play App store opened that same year and within eight years it was already offering 2.4 million Apps. Today that number for GooglePlay is over 3 million while Apple remains at about 2.2 million.
Note: Even though The Apple store has less Apps to offer, it outsells Google Play by almost double($85 billion Apple vs. 47.9 billion Google)
The total spending at these stores by users in 2021 (to Dec 7) was $133 billion which is 19.7 percent higher than 2020. Worldwide the spending on mobile apps in 2021 was $380 billion.
So, if you are going to build an App there is a huge market out there and App builders are making money. The percentage paid to developers for approved Apps Is 70% of the income at the Apple store and Google Play. In the book publishing business, the percentage that goes to the author is only 15%)
The top 200 Apps at the Google and Apple stores grossed$85,000 per day. The top 800 Apps generated $3,500 per day. When you consider that the developer (usually a team) income is 70% of those numbers it is easier to understand why there are millions of Apps available.
Since there are millions of apps at each store there are also“black hat” and “white hat” activities to get better positions in these huge stores and create more sales opportunities. This is almost exactly like the battle of thousands of companies trying to get their website a better position on the search engines and they face the same sort of “sanctions” for “black Hat” strategies.
There is something very “telling” about the name “Google Play Store” that gives the impression games are what Apps are all about. I suppose this is very understandable given that so much App income comes from games. Consider that just one game “Angry Birds” was downloaded more than 3 billion times!
However, many Apps are also very significant contributors to efficiency, productivity, and profitability in the business community.
Beyond Games:
As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog our professional interest in Apps is as software developers for the staffing Industry.
Whether you define that industry broadly, i.e., to include the newer cloud-based platforms of the gig economy or simply the 22,000 companies of the more traditional temporary staffing companies, you will find millions of its contract workers, core staff, clients and supervisors using mobile apps every day to add greater efficiencies to their work.
Mobile Apps enable our customer’s clients to post job openings instantly to every qualified worker’s phone, workers can instant message to and from their agencies and their job site supervisors, clients of staffing agencies can post shift schedules instantly and vetted workers can then self-select open shift work together with all details necessary to report for work including a map on how to get there.
Unscheduled workers can indicate availability and interest in open positions,can send job evaluations and time cards for approval and be forwarded to payroll, workers can receive client evaluations, have access their employment account, prospective workers can apply for open positions, sign up for health insurance, fill out all onboarding information, update employment tax information and much more. . . and all from their own smartphone from anywhere.
So, whether you want to hail a rickshaw in Bangkok, or an Uber in Los Angeles, or have someone do your grocery shopping and deliver it, there is an App. A little closer to our home in the staffing industry, there is also a wonderful app to help recruit, assign, manage, and pay 50 hospitality workers for a wedding in New York City and thousands of other temporary work engagements.
For these and so many other reasons our staffing software company is delighted to be a part of“The Amazing Development of the Mobile App”, and personally, I still love the “numbers”.
Stay safe!