Affiliate Disclosure
If you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Read our ethics policy.

Smartphone users becoming more discerning about the apps they use, Gartner says

Six years into the current incarnation of the mobile app marketplace, a recent survey suggests that while smartphone owners have not lost their appetite for new apps, developers hoping to make it into users' everyday rotation have a higher bar to reach.

Thanks to the maturity of the market, users are seen as having largely settled on their core stable of apps, and are reluctant to change their usage pattern. The data, collected by market research firm Gartner, came via a survey of over 2,000 American and German consumers last year.

"It's not that smartphone users have lost interest in apps, users remain excited about what apps can do for them in their daily lives, including for work and nonwork app scenarios," Gartner research director Brian Blau said in a release. "However, app users need to be convinced about the value of the app."

Apps in specific niches —  such as fitness —  may be found on relatively fewer handsets overall, but the users that do have them installed use the apps often. While fitness apps were installed on only 23 percent of handsets in the U.S. and just 16 percent in Germany, more than 70 percent of those were used at least once a

week.

That could indicate that users who find an app they like in a particular vertical may stick with it as long as it works, no matter the advancements made by competitors.

"[Users'] willingness for new app experiences is open-ended, but their plan is to keep their same patterns of use," Blau added. "Users will try new apps, but they need to be convinced of an app's value before they adopt them and change use patterns over the long term."