Digital Booming: APP explosion, is your phone space enough?
Digital Booming: APP explosion, is your phone space enough? Let’s look at some data from a big country in Asia, China, which is one sample we can have enough information and data to show up and answer the question raised. That’s the news and the general information we got from the country, then let’s see what we can learn as follows.
China is called a giant in Asia and is the most accelerated and leading country among underdeveloped countries. According to data recently released by China’s the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of the end of February this year, the number of apps monitored in the domestic market was as high as 2.35 million. An increment added 30,000 in February alone. Among them, the number of APPs in the Apple Store (China) is 1.33 million. The number of domestic third-party application store APPs is 1.01 million. The total number of downloads is 2,016.3 billion, and each Chinese co-author has downloaded more than 1,400 APPs. Many people are shocked to see this data, and we live in an era of an APP explosion.
According to a survey conducted by the media, people change their mobile phones because of the pursuit of new models, nor is it that the old mobile phones are not easy to use. Still, the original mobile phone storage space is not enough. Want to try a new app? I’m sorry, let’s change the phone first. Then you say, I don’t try it, I only use these frequently used apps, so I don’t need to change my phone? No, because the installed APP is also expanding, swallowing the storage of the mobile phone.
If you look at your mobile phone, you will know that after using the new mobile phone for a year and a half, WeChat accounts for about 20GB, Taobao, Alipay, Douyin, etc., each account for about 5GB. Meituan, JD.com, Station B, etc. At least 2GB each, plus a little bit of decoration, 64GB of memory can’t hold it.
What’s more troublesome is that simply changing the phone won’t solve the underlying problem. On the one hand, the number and occupied space of APPs are expanding rapidly; on the other hand, the size of mobile phone memory is growing at a turtle rate. For example, the iPhone 8 launched in 2017 has a starting storage of 64GB, while the iPhone 13 released last year has a starting storage of 128GB, which has only doubled in 4 years. That is to say, even if there is a mine at home, you can change your mobile phone when you don’t have to, but you will not be able to achieve “app freedom”.
So, how to solve the contradiction between the growing Internet demand of the people and the unbalanced and insufficient development of mobile phone storage? The current thinking is nothing more than two: to find a way from the hardware, by upgrading the mobile phone chip, to achieve a larger storage capacity with a smaller space. However, the current chip manufacturing process is close to the physical limit, and the space for further substantial expansion is limited. Another way is to require the lightweight of the APP itself. It is impossible to make significant APPs “automatically lose weight”. Indeed, we have seen that substantial APPs have launched “speed versions” in recent years, but this is mainly to seize the sinking market. Like the regular version of the leading traffic portal, it is still a trend of more and more functions and larger volume.
Recently, a scholar in China raised an interesting question: Are today’s smartphones all going in the wrong direction? The current trend of APP explosion is not the same as the original idea of smartphones. Other than that, are there any other ideas?
It is said that when the first-generation iPhone was released in 2007, the consensus in the industry was that smartphones should be used like PCs to access websites through browsers, rather than installing APPs on mobile phones separately. Because the performance of smartphones at that time was far inferior to that of PCs, and the computing power, storage capacity, and battery life were feeble, the best positioning was to not treat the mobile phone as independent computing hardware but as just a terminal connected to the network, equipment.
At the same time, to have robust control over the Apple experience, Jobs also refused outsiders to participate in developing the Apple APP. But in 2008, Jobs changed his mind, started the App Store, and began to build an APP ecosystem. Since then, APP has ushered in its own “Cambrian explosion”.
Two years later, in 2010, Wired, a well-known American technology magazine, published an article called “The Web is Dead, the Internet Lives Forever”. The general meaning of the article is the era of the Web has passed, and the period of APP has officially begun. It is true that today we frequently open various apps on our mobile phones but hardly ever use a browser.
After more than ten years of APP explosion, we have encountered two significant dilemmas today: the mobile phone storage mentioned above will never be enough; the other is that the Internet world is becoming more and more closed. The Web era is open, and users can jump from one web page to another at will, while APPs are secure information islands that are not interconnected and often cannot jump freely. In the 97th issue of “Getting Toutiao”, we specifically discussed that the emergence of APP has made the Internet deviate from the original intention of “decentralization and borderless”.
So, let’s go back to the question raised by Mr. Qian Dehu: If the decade of APP explosion is regarded as a detour for smartphones, now, is there a chance for smartphones to get back on track and return to the original intention of cloud computing? From the perspective of network conditions, the 5G network speed is more than 100 times that of the 3G era, and the delay is only 1% of the original. The network conditions are fully satisfied. From the perspective of the development of cloud computing itself, Chinese and foreign technology giants are now investing heavily in cloud computing, and SaaS services have also entered the fast lane of growth. It can be said that when smartphones return to the cloud, everything is ready and only due to the east wind.
Don’t think this is a fantasy; in fact, we already have cloud applications around us, and this is the WeChat applet. The applet does not need to be downloaded and installed, and it will not occupy the storage of the mobile phone. When it was just launched, many people predicted that it would “kill the APP’s life”. Today, the daily active users of WeChat mini-programs have reached 450 million, and the number of developers is as high as 3 million. It can be said that the WeChat applet is the best proofing of cloud applications.
Recently, Coolpad, a veteran mobile phone manufacturer known as “China Cool Alliance”, announced that it would switch the track to make a lightweight mobile phone that embraces the cloud. That is to say, get rid of the infinite involution of mobile phone hardware, and no longer desperately pursue more powerful chips and more extensive storage, but comprehensively optimize the user’s cloud application experience, including making more intelligent cloud storage, and directly writing WeChat mini-programs into In the operating system kernel, embrace the cloud application ecology. In Coolpad’s vision, the smartphone industry will become more and more “soft” ten years later, and the business model will change from a one-time purchase fee to a long-term subscription system. Even mobile phone manufacturers will directly turn into SaaS companies.
How likely do you think such a prospect is? Let’s leave your comment and share your idea on the question.
