Imagine you have fallen asleep on the last train home after work. Only a few decades ago this would have kickstarted a long series of events that would hopefully find you arriving at your front door before you have to leave for work again the next morning. Technological advances now make this scenario obsolete – and it is mainly down to mobile phone apps.
Anyone in the position outlined above would be able to not only locate exactly where they were, but would also be able to arrange transport, pay for it, and maybe even order some food to be waiting for them when they got home. We have apps for everything these days and most of them are not needed to get us home safely at night.
We order our food, buy – and watch – our entertainment, and can even make sports predictions on ones like the Xbet app. It seems like every possible task has an app to help us out. But how did we get to this point? How have mobile apps changed our lives?
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The Rise of Smartphones
Readers of a certain age may find it difficult to comprehend how we even functioned before the advent of smartphones and apps. It is less than 20 years since Apple and Google launched their app stores and we have experienced a massively dramatic change since then. These days, everything can be done through an app.
Although people obviously still use desktop and laptop computers – and download apps onto them – we use our mobile phones far more regularly and that is why development has concentrated in that area. Smartphones are used in our work time and our downtime and the sheer number of apps available has skyrocketed.
Convenience Rules
The main reason for the proliferation of mobile apps is that they are just so convenient. We may overestimate and exaggerate how busy our lives are in the modern world but there is no doubt that the convenience of apps is a huge benefit. Why spend time completing tasks in lots of different places when you can accomplish them all in the palm of your hand?
Modern society has gotten more and more used to having everything instantly. Our attention spans do not allow us the possibility of waiting for something to happen and apps mean that we don’t have to. Of course, we can still take our time and get things “the old-fashioned way” – but using an app is far more convenient.
Monetization
App developers are not making these technological advancements purely for the benefit of the human race, however. There are millions of mobile phone apps that are completely free to download – but there is nearly always an opportunity to upgrade in some way to a paid-for version that offers even more convenience.
The monetization of apps comes in various different ways. The premium version is just one way that developers can become successful – and profitable. Other methods include subscription offers, advertising, and affiliate marketing. Apps may make our lives easier but they invariably come with some kind of cost.
One Stop Shop
The convenience factor of mobile phone apps can be seen as a “one stop shop” for customers. We may use the internet to shop online, book cinema tickets, and place sports bets, but the phone versions of the apps mean that we don’t even have to search around for the service providers.
We have not reached the stage where a single app provides us with all the services we need but users generally like to feel as though we are benefitting from specific expertise. Having different apps for different services is accepted as long as we can find them all in one handy place – our phones.
Apps to Tell Us What to Do
It is not just this rise of e-commerce that we have apps to thank for though. Apps have completely changed just about every aspect of our lives, even those outside of our retail experience. We also use apps to tell us how to live our lives. The huge increase in wellbeing apps proves that this is the case.
From organizing our daily schedules to telling us what to eat and drink – and at what time of the day – apps now control our lives. That may sound like a negative but the way that we are able to learn how to be more productive or healthy via the use of mobile phone apps show that convenience and potential profit are not the only elements associated with the rise of the apps.
Problems with Apps
There is no doubt that apps make our lives more convenient. But, as with any technological development, there are some downsides. There are concerns that we spend too much time staring at devices and this is especially true when it comes to children. App “addiction” is regarded as a real problem these days.
But we also have to consider the other side of the coin. What happens to those people who don’t use apps or refuse to get involved in the modern technological world? Anyone not using a smartphone can find it difficult to find information or even pay for services these days. For some, this rise of the apps could be seen as discriminatory.
The Future of Mobile Apps
The only completely predictable factor for the future of apps is that they are going to be around for a while yet. Technological advancements may mean that we use them in different and even more convenient ways but we have gotten so used to apps that it is hard to see how we would wean ourselves off them.
It is more likely that developers will figure out more ways to make our lives easier – or to convince us that they are – and how to monetize that operation. Artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) will all become more common and apps will become more complex. They have completely revolutionized our lives – but there is still definitely more to come.
