Of The Many Apps On Our Phones, Majority Of Us Spend 80% Of The Time In Just Five Apps

We all have them and probably use them a lot and I’m talking about mobile apps. The question remains however, how we use them and just how many of them does the average user use or need daily.

According to a Marketing Land survey report, majority of app users spend 80 percent of their time in just five apps. For those of us who have tens of these apps on our phones, we are more likely to spend a bigger part of our time in five or less of those apps. The chart below also shows that Facebook and Google still dominate usage and while the survey was conducted in the United States, it is a broader reflection of what is also obtainable globally.

The chart below from Statista which shows global app usage for May 2016 further tells us that social media services from Google and Facebook continue to be the most used apps.  On a global scale though, Facebook’s apps dominate Google even as Instagram and WhatsApp both now have over 500 million and 1 billion users monthly respectively.

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While apps are still in vogue for majority for smartphone users, chatbots are the future. In an article titled “The Move From Mobile Apps To Chatbots”, Shahzia Banth says “in the enterprise space, bots will be handling crucial and confidential information that may heavily influence the success or failure of a business. Users will need to trust bots to aid their decisions, submit requests, and other expectations in various business scenarios. Contextual information can also increase trust.  As trust increases, bots will be handling more important content and users will rely on it more.

Trust is deep rooted from a variety of personal traits when it comes to trusting another human being; such as having similar attributes, risk tolerance, relative power, and capability. Does this apply to chatbots as well? I ask this because users will know or be aware that the bots are not human, but will they expect the same sort of qualities or evaluate the bot with the same criteria as it would to another human being in order to trust?

These are important questions to consider because enterprise bots will be handling matters that may affect a user’s productivity and career based on a sole decision, which means they will need to rely on the bot to give them accurate and contextual information. For instance, a sales associate will be able to receive alerts or suggestions on new leads based on historic and contextual market data. The associate needs to trust the bot in order to accept its suggestions and decide what to do. Consequently, a user arguing, “The bot gave me false sales reports” may be difficult to convince others because people will most likely see the bot as an accurate system with little potential for errors.”

Microsoft, Facebook and Google are already tapping into the potential of this future with chatbots which rely on artificial intelligence to help solve our daily challenges whether it’s looking for the best restaurant or buying stuff online. Facebook announced its own chatbots earlier in April for the Messenger app which businesses can now use to easily interact with billions of users.

Image: Marketing Land