(Image source: Recode)
According to numbers from Nomura, the top 15 app publishers in the U.S. saw app downloads drop an average of 20% year-on-year in the month of May alone.
That's a big drop and it affects heavyweights such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Netflix.
Out of the top 15 app publishers in the U.S., only two managed to come out unscathed, and they are Uber and Snapchat. The two apps still experience tremendous growth.
Even more shocking is the finding that "the average U.S. smartphone user downloads zero apps per month."
It seems then that the smartphone market in the U.S. is pretty saturated at this point, and whoever owns a smartphone has had one for a while now and already has all the apps that he or she needs.
That said, this doesn't mean that it's all over for app developers. Outside of the U.S., app publishers still experience positive, albeit modest, growth.
In addition, download numbers don't give a full picture of a business. Facebook, for instance, already have 1.65 billion downloads - in other words, over 20% of the world's population - at which point it's hard to find new users.
Source: Recode
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