Apps in China have a short lifecycle. (Photo : Reuters)
Applications used and downloaded in China only live for 10 months. According to the report in the Chinese-language MoneyWeek magazine, about 85 percent of smartphone users delete apps that they have downloaded within one month.
China was hailed in 2014 as the country having the most smartphone users in the world. However, despite this overwhelming usage of smartphones in the country, a huge number of apps that exists in the market perish. This is mainly due to the lack of interest among people.
Analyst Luo Yuanmei of iiMedia Research, a Chinese mobile Internet research firm, said that only 5 percent of apps remain on users’ smartphones five months after the apps were downloaded.
A report from global research firm Adjust stated that zombie apps, or those that are no longer visible in the appstore, accounted for 81.3 percent of total in China, being the highest ratio in the world.
The report from Adjust is titled “The Undead App Store, The Course for Discovery in 2015.” It further said that a low entry barrier for developers results in the high growth in app numbers as well as death rate.
With all these data, the conclusion could be that the revenue of apps in China may be approaching a downhill.
There are two means of charging fees when it comes to downloading applications. One is when fees are charged when users download the app, another is through the advertisements when users click on one.
Ma Li, CEO of Zuimei, a platform for app recommendations, gave a solution to this problem, saying that content and service are the soul of an app. He said that unless the apps have relevance to people’s lives, these apps would not be able to make money.
