Hike Founder: ‘Apps Will Be Dead in 5 Years’. One big issue has been hanging over this year’s Web Summit, the tech cornucopia that inspired over 70,000 investors, corporate giants, and startup hopefuls to flock to Lisbon this week. No, it’s not the specter of a Donald Trump presidency. India’s Hike Messenger, for instance, has grown to 100 million users over the past few years, and over 90 percent of its users fall between the ages of 15 and 24. “The most natural way to interact [with a brand] is like this, just as we are now,” he said. Mittal’s vision is similar to one laid out by James Temperton in his Wired UK piece from this week, “Apps are dying. You’ve just walked into your kitchen after a long week. Think of the last interaction you had with a software application. Now, thanks to bots, those rules are changing. In other words, instead of using different apps to do different things, we’ll simply start interacting with our favorite companies through a central messaging system that allows us to conversationally ask for what we want.
One big issue has been hanging over this year’s Web Summit, the tech cornucopia that
inspired over 70,000 investors, corporate giants, and startup
hopefuls to flock to Lisbon this week. No, it’s not the specter of
a Donald Trump presidency. Instead, it’s the sudden decline of
apps, which casts a cloud over the optimistic pitches that tech
companies like to tout with every mobile release.
As Recode reported this summer, the average American smartphone
user now
downloads zero new apps each month. New apps aren’t the only
ones taking a hit. Downloads of the 15 most popular apps are down
20 percent year over year as well.
However, apps in developing markets have avoided such a fate.
India’s Hike Messenger, for
instance, has grown to 100 million users over the past few years,
and over 90 percent of its users fall between the ages of 15 and
24. It’s the messaging world’s latest unicorn, valued at $1.4
billion after a recent $175 million venture round led by Chinese
digital giant Tencent.
At the helm of Hike is 28-year-old Kavin Bharti Mittal—the son
of Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises
and the 13th richest man in the world. During an interview with me
on stage at Web Summit, Bharti made a surprising prediction about
the global app ecosystem: “All apps will be dead in five
years.”
Mittal sees apps as a fragmented system…
COMMENTS