Article 3; When Phones are Just Too Smart

This article, written by Katie Hafner on January 29th, 2010, touches on the mobile phone applications craze so prominent today. The author addresses a young woman’s experience with her own iPhone. Caroline Cua, the woman the author speaks of, has owned an iPhone for approximately one year. Despite the abundance of available applications for her phone, Caroline “has downloaded precisely five programs”.
The author brings to light the fact that there is a multitude of available apps; somewhere in the range of “140,000 and counting”. The fact that there are so many applications available to iPhone users but only 5 have found a place on her phone makes her feel self conscious around friends. “I said to him, ‘O.K., now I’m officially feeling like a loser,’” She recalled saying this to a friend after being asked to see which applications she had.
“According to Flurry, the average Apple iPod Touch user regularly uses 5 –10 apps”. With this fact, it makes Caroline’s self consciousness seem superfluous. Instead of being an exception, “she is the rule”. The author arrives at a conclusion about why so few apps are used regularly by the average person: “The next generation of gadget users might prove different, but for now it is clear that people prefer fewer choices, and that they gravitate consistently toward the same small number of things that they like”. Despite so many choices that could potentially make life more convenient, the author suggests that we really only desire a very small percentage of the available technology (apps) today.
Another article written by Stuart Dredge suggests that the average user has downloaded approximately 65 apps to their mobile device. “A survey of 1,200 iPhone owners commissioned by US firm AppsFire claims that the average owner has downloaded 65 apps for their device, spending around $80 in total”. Although this figure seems to greatly contradict the former Flurry figure, it does not. Just because a user has downloaded an app, they don’t necessarily keep it or use it regularly.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/34261/The-average-iPhone-user-has-spent-80-on-apps

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/fashion/31apps.html?ref=technology