Can We Live Without Mobile Apps?

The diagram is based on a survey by Apigee among 762 respondents.

It's been a long while since mobile phones became our irreplaceable assistants. It's been less time since they evolved into smartphones. And it was only 2007 when Apple presented the very first iPhone as a combination of a phone, a mediaplayer and a tool for Internet surfing. Since then smartphones became even closer to us. But the true power behind them are applications distributed through corresponding stores. The whole diversity of third-party apps is what we can't do without.

Some might say that living without apps is not a problem. Perhaps these people have been living without smartphones and tablets, and most importantly, without apps. But those who have this 'smart' experience, they got used to planning this and that with apps, and can feel incomplete without them. Apps give us an opportunity to streamline our daily activities and bring everything to order. When we don't want to waste our time on one or another activity, apps help us save some for a pastime we prefer. Apps often help us waste our time, but as well they help us save it. They allow us to have (almost) all that we need in the pocket. Can we live without them?


What if we tried to leave our smart assistants aside for several days?

Will you feel discomfort if you do? Surely you will. It won't be long until you want your mobile device back. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you are mobile-dependent or online-addicted.

Perhaps the most tempting reason to take the device back in your hands is social networking and photo/video sharing. That's because it's the most convenient way for each of us to keep in touch with everyone we know. It's hard to schedule your day to communicate with everyone you want, have a chat, exchange thoughts on the latest news in whatever sphere, remember good old days looking through memorable photos.

What else is vitally important for an average user? Let's think. We can quite easily schedule our days and plan our tasks on paper. However, we don't have such efficient analogues to weather and navigation apps, and of course, there's no alternative to compete with googling anything on a smartphone. Checking inbox on the go is also crucial for busy people. But is there anyone who isn't busy nowadays?


How do we feel without the apps that we got used to?

How do we feel without maps, camera apps, news aggregators, mediaplayers? The most common answers would be 'uninformed', 'powerless' and 'lost'. And what do we do when we return back to the mobile reality and finally hold our devices in hands? Let's look at the results of a survey by eBay:
- 49% of respondents started social activities: taking and sharing photos and videos;
- 48% read news (it probably feels like you've been absent in the world);
- 22% budgeted their money;
- 23% met with friends and family;
- 21% shopped online;
- 12% showed loyalty to health & fitness apps;
- 5% went on a date.
What's interesting is that we save on average half an hour in our daily activities, when we use apps. That's 182 hours a year.

Can we live without smartphones? That's an individual question. It depends on the person and on the kind of smartphones. The hardest is to live without modern-day smartphones and without those apps we got used to. Somewhere we stated that the success of an application store doesn't depend that much on the number of apps, but rather on the presence of the most widely used apps built with quality. What do you think about that?


Based on an infographic which reflects a survey by eBay, conducted among 200 iPhone users who tried to survive 4 days without apps. Over 1/3 of participants could not handle this challenge.




- See more:
✪ When Do Mobile Applications Enhance Business? [Statistics]
✪ 8 Simply Beautiful Applications
✪ The Future Of Gadgets