[anysz]

Such clickbait.

Sure the gold rush, get-rich-quick-cause-there-are-two-of-you era for mobile apps is over. But the boom for mobile apps will never be over, much like web apps will never be over. How many billion dollar websites emerged a decade after everyone said the web boom was over?

Apps are merely a distribution platform for services. As the world evolves, we will never run out of needs for services.

As long as you're solving a need and you're capable of communicating it to your target market, you will make lots of money.

Apps and software in general will forever be more efficient than their predecessors, and thus, IMHO, the app boom has only begun.

[notatoad]

>But the boom for mobile apps will never be over

that is, by definition, not a boom. A boom is a period of unusual, unsustainable growth. The boom is over and the app market is shifting into a normal sustainable market where good products and services are valued and low-effort or less useful apps have a hard time succeeding.

The headline wasn't "apps are dead" - just because you misunderstood it doesn't make it clickbait.

[Touche]

I'm not sure that the app economy wasn't a temporarily bubble. We've yet to see many apps reach the sustainable part.

Very few apps are successful charging the customer. A few games are successful selling in-app purchases, but even those almost never last. Social apps some times get popular but rarely find a way to monetize, they wind up selling themselves to larger businesses who use them as a loss-leader.

Compared to desktop and the web, the number of sustainable businesses on mobile apps is depressingly small.

[jamescostian]

> But the boom for mobile apps will never be over, much like web apps will never be over. How many billion dollar websites emerged a decade after everyone said the web boom was over?

I don't think the author was arguing that there can never be "billion dollar" apps, just that the "boom" is over. Similarly, people still say that the "web boom" ended a very long time ago, but they aren't saying "You cannot make billion dollar websites now that the web boom is over", they are just saying that the boom is over.

Just look at a definition of the word boom to understand it better: "of a business or industry : to grow or expand suddenly" [0]

[0] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boom

[nickbauman]

I think the author is just saying "turds don't float anymore." Your app has to be really good / gratifying to use to make any money at all.