Nowadays, mobile devices are full of mobile applications. On average, each smartphone user uses about 30 mobile applications each month. The category of mobile applications varies: from entertainment mobile applications to shopping, applications for travel, applications for cooking, educational applications, social networks and many more.
The average user checks his cell phone every 18 minutes. This is an ongoing activity. People do not look at their cell phone to call someone 4 times in an hour. However, they check their cell phones to read their alerts, see their updates and play games. All this happens in an application in a smartphone, but some apps are more popular than others.
Mobile applications or applications are becoming an increasingly important part of all digital devices. While the adoption and use of applications for marketing purposes has grown exponentially in recent years, there is little academic research in this area. However, some apps are most popular and famous all over the world according to the statistics.
It is historically accepted that man is a social being. It is obvious that it has been proven with the use of applications that offer online socialization and communication between people. The most famous applications belong to this category such as Facebook, and WhatsApp, messenger etc.
Facebook is a social networking site launched in February 4, 2004. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook as a member of Harvard University. Initially, only Harvard students were eligible to participate, but later it was extended to the Ivy League. The name of the site comes from the presentation documents of the members of the university communities of some American colleges and preparatory schools used by the new students to get to know each other. In 2005 the right of access was extended to students of specific high schools and members of certain student communities, while in 2006 the service became accessible to every person on the planet over the age of 13.
Facebook has reached 2.8 billion active Facebook users by the end of 2020. Features that catch the user’s attention are ease of use, free profile configuration, uploading photos and videos, tagging friends in photos, accessibility to a friend of ours, the ability to keep a basic privacy if we wish so that only specific people have access to our data, countless applications for entertainment and social networking or just information.
Applications Today
Of course, apart from the most well-known applications of internet socialization and communication, we have mainly in recent years a plethora of applications depending on the hobbies and interests of each user. According to application area, there are different categories of mobile application.
1. Communications: Internet Browsing, email IM client, Social Networking
2. Games: Puzzle/ Strategy, Cards /Casino, Action/ Adventure
3. Multimedia: Graphics /Image viewer, Presentation’s viewers, Video Players, Audio players
4. Productivity: Calendars, Calculators, Diary, Notepad /Memo/Word Processors, Spreadsheets
5. Travel: City guide, Currency converter, Translators, GPS/Maps, Itineraries / Schedules, Weather
6. Utilities: Profile manager, Idle screen/Screen saver, Address book, Task manager, Call manager, File manager
7.Bussiness: Skype Business, LinkedIn, Microsoft Team
One of the most popular app and well-known examples is YouTube, which originally offered videos with multiple topics and categories, nowadays the registered user can upload his own video to his channel.
YouTube
It was created in February 2005 and November 2006 was named by Time magazine “Invention of the Year 2006”. In October 2006, the company was acquired by Google in a $ 1.65 billion stock exchange and now operates as a subsidiary of Google. The company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated content, including movie clips, TV clips, videos and music, as well as amateur content such as video blogging. and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube is uploaded by individuals, although media and businesses including CBS, BBC, Vevo and other organizations provide some of their material through the site as part of the YouTube Affiliate Program.
Future of mobile apps
The future of mobile applications is expected to be very interesting and with a combination of many technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, technology of things, as well as the level of security especially in financial applications and even cryptocurrencies. The competition is great in different operating systems such as Apple in relation to Android. Maybe we will see new “smarter” operating systems for more specialized uses. We will definitely have an exciting and interesting future in terms of mobile applications.
