Is the app market shrinking?
From the very first day of my journey in app development I wonder if there is still an end-user demand for apps.
Based on my own and my friends’ pattern of app usage, I see it rather pessimistic. We use apps came with the OS, some social apps, and that’s that pretty much. I have the tendency to play as well. The other day a guy here posted his minesweeper app, I would even pay a one-time sum for it. It got a lot of upvotes here too. On the all-time leaderboard, however, there were 3 guys only. I am one of them. I am not burying it, just it contributed to my question.
I think, but I am genuinely thinking, so it’s not a strong opinion, that big share of the most downloaded apps are tools of a company, supporting its business. A bank, a restaurant, a taxi company, etc. So they don’t make revenues by selling the app.
The other segment is the life changer apps, Duolingo, gym apps. They are highly gamified, and the successful ones require little effort from the user, and provide maximum amount of reward, but their actual helpfulness is debatable. I tested an app which teaches sign languages, it was actually good. Never paid for it, stopped using it, because I didn’t feel like I want to practice.
My primary profession is teaching, I involve with the teenagers sometimes in a conversation about app usage. They consume a lot of content, play a little, and that’s it mostly.
When it comes to the statistics of my apps, I see users, I see some demand, little to no revenues. My apps need to be polished, their user experience needs to be improved, the revenue strategy must be refined, so to speak, my failure is coded in my apps. But when I look around IRL, I don’t see the potential anyway.
My question is perhaps elaborated enough: isn’t indie development just a tool to build a portfolio of your skills, and get employed at a company later? Those of you, who make revenues, didn’t you experience a decline in income over the past years? Are we in Alaska after the gold rush, or is it still an ongoing thing?