Individuals don't need that many apps. But since individuals need different sets, we need a large total. Your Mum needs rail navigator for German railway tickets. I need the Dublin Bus app. If you're exhibiting at the Munich Design Conference, you might need their useless lanyard scanning app.
Sometimes users need specific apps that are otherwise interchangeable. Kindle, for Kindle owners. Kobo For Kobo Owners. Gmail for Gmail people. Viber for friends of viber users. Whatsapp. LotusMessenger. Skype. Expensify for people who use expensify. You don't want your Mum to have to tell her friends to use Skype instead of LotusMessenger because her tablet doesn't have LotusMessenger, especially if she already uses it on her laptop or phone.
Raw numbers implicitly assume that the ratio of crap/important is the same across platforms. You could use the number of apps X each app's userbase to get the idea. The platforms are probably look more level if you look at numbers like that.
It's more critical now that people already have smartphones and they'll probably want the 5-10 apps they use to work on whatever tablet they buy.
I made up the Munich Design Conference, so their app is doubly useless :)
I'm sure there is a large percentage of apps that are completely useless or interchangeable for most users. But, at 2000 there are probably plenty of useful (to some people) apps missing where the appstore has dozens.
Maybe it's just me, but the Skype "upgrades" for Android and Linux seems to have gotten progressively worse. Whereas they both used to run smoothly for years, the Linux version now doesn't recognize my webcam (on hardware it had no problems with before, and with no OS upgrad in between) and the Android version stutters and randomly garbles video...
I'm actively looking for better alternatives now. Barring that I'll have to hunt down older versions of Skype..
Agreed on all points. I haven't allowed Skype to update itself in years. You can download an older version of their desktop app for yourself here. if that helps: http://www.oldversion.com/Skype.html
Sometimes users need specific apps that are otherwise interchangeable. Kindle, for Kindle owners. Kobo For Kobo Owners. Gmail for Gmail people. Viber for friends of viber users. Whatsapp. LotusMessenger. Skype. Expensify for people who use expensify. You don't want your Mum to have to tell her friends to use Skype instead of LotusMessenger because her tablet doesn't have LotusMessenger, especially if she already uses it on her laptop or phone.
Raw numbers implicitly assume that the ratio of crap/important is the same across platforms. You could use the number of apps X each app's userbase to get the idea. The platforms are probably look more level if you look at numbers like that.
It's more critical now that people already have smartphones and they'll probably want the 5-10 apps they use to work on whatever tablet they buy.