When Will The App Bubble Burst?

The Facts

Tech research giant, Gartner, estimates 17.7 billion apps were downloaded in 2011 and that's conservative compared to mobile analytics firm, Flurry, who have it at 25 billion and are projecting 50 billion in 2012.

Of the 6 billion mobile subscriptions (87% of the global population) only 500 million are smartphones, projected to grow to a modest 631 million (Gartner again) during 2012.

17,700,000,000 / 500,000,000 = 35.4 apps per handset.
50,000,000,000 / 613,000,000 = 81.6 apps per handset.

Being a bit geeky, I have around 300 apps on my phone but I regularly use about 10 of them, split almost equally across folders entitled Travel, News, Entertainment, Social and Games. That's the app bubble for you. There's a cacophony of choice but very few apps that ever be any more than one hit wonders, if indeed they make the 'mobile charts' at all.

In 2011 more than 50% of Internet traffic was generated from mobile devices. For the most-part that usage calculation, courtesy of Google, excluded time spent in apps, when users were disconnected form the Internet. Nonetheless they were evidently attempting to configure the multitude of newfangled widgets and gizmo's available to them, in an way that might leave them more productive, or better entertained, whilst on the move. Consumers have unquestionably gone mobile. Whether we are browsing, chatting, shopping, sharing pics or doing business, more often then not we're doing it via an handful of apps, or, over the mobile Internet - but these are two quite different behaviours. Unsurprisingly then, there is much debate amongst marketeers as to which is the more engaging of the two nomadic cousins. Mobile apps or mobile websites?

It is acknowledged that mobile apps and mobile websites (or the mobile Internet as it's becoming known) offer contrasting user experiences. As brand, should one strive to make a dent in the already saturated app-mosphere, or simply optimise ones offerings for the mobile Internet? Whilst the