The sticky and ubiquitous mobile app
Smartphones are everywhere. Literally. According to Business Insider, there will soon be one smartphone for five people in the world–that’s roughly 1.5 billion smartphones for the world’s 7 billion inhabitants. These “mobile computing”/communication devices are selling at a pace of slightly under 50%. And despite their relatively high cost, smartphones are even finding a home in the the least developed regions.
Less ubiquitous, but spreading almost as rapidly, is the mobile tablet. Technology analysts predict that more than 197 million tablets will ship this year, a roughly 70% increase over last year’s volume. And by year’s end, tablet devices will outnumber laptops and desktop computers.
So clearly, if your church has a message to spread, either to its local membership, or to the foreign mission field, smartphones and tablets are an ideal conduit. But the ubiquity is not just about the devices themselves, but also about the most identifiable feature common to both systems: the app.
By definition, apps (short for applications), are Internet-connected software programs that run primarily on smartphones and other mobile devices. Smartphones make up more than 85% of mobile phone sales primarily because they can run apps, which basic, or feature, phones cannot–tablets are essentially oversized smartphones (sans the cellular network phone call functionality). Apps simplify access to specific Internet programs: for example, with a few taps and swipes in virtually any mobile banking app, you can pay a bill within seconds–as opposed to mousing through several slow-loading pages in a web browser(mobile or PC), to complete the same action.
But what really distinguishes mobile apps from other Internet software applications is their sheer volume and their extreme stickiness. The leading mobile platforms, products of Apple and Google, respectively, each offer more than 700 000 apps that have been downloaded more than 25 billion times (that includes downloading on each owned mobile device, and each device replacement).
Four Leading Mobile Platforms
| Mobile Platform (Company) | Notable Devices | # of Apps | Notable Ministry App |
| iOS (Apple) | iPhone; iPad; iPod Touch | 775k | Fighter Verses |
| Android (Google) | Samsung Galaxy S; HTC One; Asus Transformer; Amazon Kindle Fire | 700k | YouVersion |
| Blackberry | Blackberry Phones; Blackberry Playbook | 100k | BibleReader for Bible Study |
| Windows Phone (Microsoft) | Nokia Lumina 920; Microsoft Surface | 130k | PocketBible |
In a previous post, we made the case for both mobile apps and mobile websites: Apps win out in comparisons of speed, user engagement, design flexibility, and offline capabilities. We specifically argued that apps provide “a sticky experience,” and that people are now spending more time using apps than browsing websites. The latest research supports that claim: Americans are spending about 2 hours per day using apps, and just 30 minutes “surfing the old-school web.”
If your ministry wants an “always-on,” sticky connection with its membership and virtual followers, then mobile apps deserve serious consideration: In general, they offer smartphone and tablet users direct access to your ministry’s text content (blogs, announcements) and multimedia (calendar, sermons, photos, music).
In an upcoming post, we will discuss specific several ways that your church ministry can utilize the ubiquitous app.
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[…] a more recent post, we presented hard evidence that mobile apps are sticky and ubiquitous. Research now shows that smartphone users on average spend about 2 hours per day using apps, and […]
[…] and gospel-centric ministries are beginning to recognize the value of what we like to call it the sticky and ubiquitous mobile app, which occupies as much as 2 hours of a typical smartphone user’s […]