Today we will touch upon a rather interesting topic. Previously, we conducted a survey among readers who shared the number of installed applications on their gadgets. So, the AndroidInsider statistics showed that Android users aged 10 to 17 years set an average of 80 applications. People aged 18 to 24 years 70 applications, the age category from 25 to 34 years old keeps the gadget in the average 66 applications. Our readers at the age of 35 to 44 years are the greatest fans of applications (an average of 85 applications). Finally, category 45-54 is 82 applications.
On average, 76 applications are installed on smartphones of readers, and the average age is 33 years. Most readers do not delete applications because of their slow work (19 people out of 24). Of course, the sample of 24 people who unsubscribed in the comments to the article is very small, but even such statistics can be useful.
But why all this? In the future, the number of applications on your smartphones can be reduced due to the increasing popularity of progressive Web applications (Progressive Web Apps or PWA).
What is PWA? PWA is the name of an application group that uses the Web technology stack (JS + HTML + CSS) and allows you to combine the ease of use of a Web site with applications specific for the native UX operating system and technical capabilities. (East. - habrahabr).
In other words, when using a mobile version of a site, the user will receive an interface and functionality that will completely replicate a full-fledged mobile application for Android, for example.
An excellent example will be a mobile version of Twitter, which completely repeats the interface and features of the Android application. The need to install the application in the presence of PWA disappears.
Instant Apps is a more advanced version of PWA, which is not based on the stack of Web technologies, but until the technology is launched in the test mode and it is not known how soon it will be available to ordinary users. Note, Instant Apps showed on Google I / O 2016, a year has passed, and the technology has not yet been provided to users. Google must learn to roll out the product immediately after the announcement, otherwise interest in it simply disappears and the technology does not "take off".
From this, the reputation of Google also falls, which is increasingly associated with a company that can not be trusted and which announces "dummy" products, that at the moment of announcement are in the alpha stage. However, this is a separate topic for discussions. Back to PWA.
How many apps are installed on your device? Surely more than 50 pieces. Of these, you most likely often use no more than five.
All other applications are wasting megabytes of memory. And here come to the aid of progressive applications. The problem is that as long as there are not enough solutions on the market. Many companies prefer full-fledged mobile applications.
Instagram recently updated the mobile version of the site. Now through the browser you can publish images.
We can talk about the implementation of a progressive application, which almost completely repeats the capabilities of a full-fledged product.
What is the result? The market of mobile applications is developing in the direction of cloud technologies. In the future, you will not need to keep all applications in the device memory. Instant Apps download only part of the application that is needed when working with it at a given time, which also saves the memory of the device. Hopefully Google will continue to develop PWA and Instant Apps.