Why Apps Will Be Replaced? And How?

Right now all of small and big businesses are going app, for booking meals to cab, for calculating your mutual fund return to keep track of your fitness, you got apps right? What if you won't need apps for these?

Hi guys

Welcome to intelligent computing, we have two major mobile OS ruling this tech world, Android and iOS.

Oss like Windows OS, Symbian OS, Firefox OS, Blackberry OS and so on kept on struggling to stay in market but they didn’t as there is paradox, people will not go to new OS if there is no apps on that, and developers will not develop and invest significant amount of time learning that frameworks of new OS and develop new app on that new OS when there is hardly users to use that.

So we have Android and iOS for most of future time, assuming no big and sudden world changing technology rise.

Just like in 90s and 2000s, every company finally understood that they should have to have a website, in 2010s and 2015s, everyone, including their grandma figured out every company needed to have an app.

First thing first, why app sucks?

To turn on flashlight or to order pizza, you have to have an app, your app needs to be found on your app store, need permission to do stuff on your phone, downloaded on your phone, take up space in your storage, and take space on home screen.

You need app to do anything you want on your smartphone, else its useless in that direction.

Companies, on other hand have to invest lots of effort/time/cost in developing, maintaining, and updating apps to cope with latest hardware and OS. Few companies does that because they make money directly from app, like Facebook via showing ads, Games via purchases and so on. But many companies uses app as ways to interact between users and company or use main service and pay for main service not app. Example Uber, you don’t pay for Uber app, but your ride.

What if it’s possible to do all of these sorts of stuff without having to have app? We’ll love it right? I mean, you are and you can do it right now and its started already, have you seen it?

So here is ways how apps will be replaced?

Super Applications

Super applications are applications which are one single application containing functionality of many other apps and thus replaced all of them with single application. Example

-       Whatsapp

-       Wechat

-       Facebook

Let’s take example of WhatsApp, WhatsApp, as they claim to be, replacement of SMS on phone and thus providing user a default way to communicate/chat with people in their contact list.

But now WhatsApp is capable of doing many things, like sharing audio/videos, making calls, sharing document, doing video chats, sharing current and live locations, sending payments, making payment at stores and so on.

Similarly WeChat started as messaging platform but you can now make payment, book cabs, and book flight tickets using it and so on.

These are already being in fire.

Chatbot

Yeah, seems like an old idea but with current boom of AI and deep learning, these Chabot are getting smarter, from Google assistant in allow app to list of these sorts of bots in Skype, you can search flight, book tickets, create meme, find restaurant nearby and so on. These may seems basics but, its just started.

Similarly Facebook massagers have tons of bots which are helping people our doing daily stuff without having to have other apps.

Virtual assistant

Yeah, awesome they are, Google assistant, Siri, Cortana, and amazon Alexa are already in game, they are already doing lots of things for us, Searching web, ordering food, booking Uber, find restaurant nearby, controlling home lights and ACs, comparing costs, and amazon Alexa, can make purchases on your behalf as well and tons of other features are being added. Those all stuff needed dedicated apps previously but now, boom.

Yeah I am sure all of the apps can’t be replaced by these 3 methods, such as gaming, dedicated professional apps and so on.

Here is the catch, many heroes out there, like NVidia, are already working on streaming games to your phone, HP server can stream high end software, from their server to your phone, that means, improvement in internet speed will let you use your phone to use these sorts of high end applications from your phone to some server working on your behalf.

So what ahead

Most of the apps which are simply interface between company and user will no longer be needed, these common service will be replaced by some sort of assistant/superapps or bots.

Some of will be streamed directly to user devices, no matter what OS user is on and what hardware the app is written for.

Most of developer won’t spent time creating apps, but feeding and automating these via APIs and connecting to bots/assistant and so on.

Just like search engine ranking, developer will get to improve their own service to get top on their list and so user will be benefitted.

You just have to call the can and google assistant may choose best service and cost in your area and book Ola, Uber or whatever will be ranked best at that time. But this will comes at the cost, these aggregator apps will be in power to control what we get. Instead of us to decide which is the best cafe in town, these will show what they can, Based or unbiased, paid or free. Service provider have to optimize their service, may pay to them and have to communicate user to rate them which makes these aggregator apps to be transparent enough.

So what will happen to app gap?

Yeah, that won’t matter anymore, all OS may just have Google assistant, and all the service that is connected to Google assistant, will be usable on that new OS, developer won’t have to create apps, and user won’t be worrying about availability of certain apps on certain OS. Where you see this is going? Example everything will be happening at backend so no worry to have front end app, or number of app to decide what user can use, just think and let us know in comment below and start a pretty good discussion on it.

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