We're used to paying for games, we were already doing it before mobile devices became popular. However, purchasing apps or paying monthly subscription fees to them is a new habit for most of us. It is thought that paid applications will have a much larger market in the next five years. The popular free apps we use today are about to get a slice of the pie...
Think about it, how many apps do you have with a paid subscription? If we asked this question five years ago, maybe you were a member of a music service, but now we are renting many services when we say video services, shopping platforms.
We're used to paying for games, and we were doing it before the mobile world. However, buying apps or paying rent with a monthly subscription is a new habit for us. If we call it a "system", there is no signal that this system will change. In fact, it is thought that paid applications will have a much larger market in the next five years.
According to the expenditures made by users in the Apple App Store, applications will leave the game category behind after two years.
When we read this graph in its naked form, the number of things it tells us is limited. We see that the market, where applications and games rise together, will grow almost twice in 2025 compared to today. When we focus on the dark blue bars, that is, the applications, it is obvious that the growth is proportionally much higher. In the Apple App Store, while the place of games among the spending items of users is twice as compared to the applications, we see that in 2021, the applications are increasing their pace.
Since the beginning of the epidemic, shopping from mobile applications and accepting video calls in the middle of our lives have definitely been effective in this rise. When we think independently of the epidemic, we have heard the signs of the rise of applications for a while, but the "mobile spending revolution" never caught our attention, probably because everyone around us adapted to this change as much as we did.
Will we be tenants in all applications in the near future?
There are many elements that blunt the user experience in the free versions of the applications. When it comes to annoying ads, sometimes endless ads, and absurd delivery charges when it comes to shopping, paid versions made sense. Of course, this discussion also has an explanation in terms of technology philosophy: Will we be tenants in all the channels we own in five years?
In other words, we wonder if the applications that we have bought and put aside and used for years will become a thing of the past. It is clear that it is not sustainable to become a member of a different platform for each series or movie by paying a fee of close to one hundred lira every month. As you can see, every revolutionary development brings its own question marks.
According to SensorTower's research, applications will cross the $100 billion threshold by 2025. Meanwhile, the games will be content with maintaining their share in 2024. In this projection, it would not be unreasonable to expect the non-stop rise of applications in 2026 and beyond. But in the digital world, expectations don't matter much. As an alternative scenario, we may suddenly move to a different place as open source versions of applications arise and offer greater promises in terms of data security.
Maybe this data can guide us about how realistic this scenario is: The expected rise rate of applications is much higher than the increase rate that games have experienced in the past years.
Sad but true: We need to get used to the idea of paying for apps, the question is how these fees will be determined.
One of the most difficult thresholds for the consumer to cross is the idea of paying for apps on a regular basis. The expectations that emerged as a result of the research indicate that a system that will force us to spend money on applications has already emerged, so whoever says "I will not pay for the application" should take a deep breath and prepare their credit card number. The money is sure to be spent. What is unclear is, will the money we spend on apps as consumers depend on subscription systems, or will we pay for a separate feature in each app with in-app purchases? Which do you think makes more sense in order to meet our needs by paying less? Let's see if your predictions hold up.
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