I pulled every live app on the US App Store into a database this week
I pulled every live app on the US App Store into a database this week.
1.13 million apps.
Then I looked only at the ones businesses build for their customers.
The numbers are not kind.
Apps in the Business category: 89,984 of them. 51% have never received a single rating. 86% never reached ten. 4% reached a hundred.
Restaurant apps built on ordering platforms: 10,295. Three in four never reached ten ratings.
Gym and studio apps built on membership platforms: 8,564. Same picture, 78% under ten.
About 40,000 live apps are the same template with a different logo. They cost a monthly fee, they sit in the store, and almost nobody installs them twice.
None of this means a business should not have an app. It means the question is wrong. "Should we have an app" is a yes or no question that a vendor will always answer yes to. The question that predicts the outcome is "what will a customer do in it every week that they cannot do faster on our website or by text."
If there is a clear answer, the app earns its place. If the answer is "see our menu and our hours," the data says you are paying for a listing nobody opens.