Is 2017 the beginning of the end for the app economy?
My take on this is that there are two factors contributing to this, and they neatly fall upon the boundaries of the two major app ecosystems. I think these issues are fixable, and I think big inroads have been made in the second.<p>Firstly, the Apple ecosystem, or the iOS ecosystem really - putting aside the Mac Appstore for now - is fraught with overhead and bureaucracy. Bootstrapping as a developer is relatively expensive given you need to have a modern mac of some sort and you have to pay a subscription which I think cuts off some of the hobbyists. Then once you&#x27;re rolling, the amount of red tape involved in testing, releasing, updating etc really is <i>shocking</i>. I&#x27;m involved in a project where we support an App for both Android and iOS and really, 90% of the work on the Apple end is managing all this bureaucracy. This is massively expensive, and when asked for recommendations on another project I said <i>&quot;develop for Android first and then hire an agency to port it to iOS&quot;</i>. The amount of messing involved really makes this a specialist competency like Solicitors&#x27; conveyancing or something and it really doesn&#x27;t make sense having your innovation team waste their effort on it.<p>Secondly then is the lack of quality control in the Android ecosystem. Aside from a few established titles, the Play-store really is a crap-shoot in terms of whether you&#x27;ll get a good app in a specialist area or somebody just chancing their arm. Like I say this has come along a good bit, but in my Android devices I often just skip on Apps entirely because I really can&#x27;t be sure whether I&#x27;m installing something dodgy or not.<p>I do appreciate the irony that each ecosystem&#x27;s strengths derive from the what I pose as its weaknesses i.e. bureaucracy =&gt; better quality app store; open submission process =&gt; lack of quality control. As both a producer and a consumer however, I am just highlighting what I see as the key issues that are limiting growth. It must be said I see ongoing improvements in the second area though, but increasing impediments in the first.