Mobile App Ecosystem is Killing the Web

Blasphemous statements like “The Web is Dead” would never have been uttered from my mouth a few years back. But times change and nowhere is change happening at a faster pace than within the mobile ecosystem. In a few short years the iOS and Android mobile platforms have eaten the web for breakfast, not to mention mobile has disrupted countless entrenched industries from hailing a taxi (Uber) to snapping photographs (Instagram).

A new tech champion has been crowned. We call it the mobile app.

The facts as laid out by Flurry, a mobile analytics firm, speak for themselves. Today, the U.S. consumer spends an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes per day on smartphones and tablets. 80% of that time (2 hours and 7 minutes) is spent inside apps and 20% (31 minutes) is spent on the mobile web. In 2008 the app economy was non-existant. This year alone the Wall Street Journal estimates the app economy to have revenues in excess of $25 billion and it’s growing at a crisp pace.

Its a good time to be positioned in the mobile app space. More than a billion people are using smartphones and that number is expected to double within the next few years. The mobile app developer community is growing and in many ways also maturing as an industry. The Los Angeles mobile application developers I’ve spoken to have seen monumental changes in the marketplace. Many are warming up to the idea of developing for new platforms and also being proactive, seeking out a greater role in shaping the industry that has shaped their lives.