It was a milestone just waiting to happen, but Apple’s Tim Cook made it official earlier this week at his company event in the Bay Area:
The iOS App Store has broken the 1,000,000 apps mark. And those apps have generated 60 billion downloads.
At jacAPPS, we’ve made a modest but important contribution to Apple’s totals – more than 800 apps that have generated upwards of 19 million downloads. It’s a dent that has hopefully helped change the face of radio’s relationship to mobile.
The impact of the app – a word that has now become part of our lexicon – runs much deeper. For media companies and brands, apps are the gateway that connect consumers with their favorite content. The app phenomenon has come a long way since the early days of the iFart app. (And yes, even this blog has its own app.)
But the inability to foresee the impact of apps cost BlackBerry its company, and severely crippled Nokia – both one-time leaders in the cellphone world. That’s the nature of a digital landscape that can change quickly and sometimes cruelly.
For radio, the app has proved to be a critically important conduit to having presence in the hottest devices of our time. We have long referred to the app ecosystem as beachfront property for radio brands. Thanks to Apple – and Android – radio continues to have amazing opportunities in the app world.
We know that once consumers buy smartphones, it’s a logical next step to download apps. Our last Techsurvey indicated that more than nine in ten smartphone owners make apps a part of their personal mobile experience. And of them, two-thirds download radio-centric apps – especially progressively younger consumers. A radio pathway to Millenials and their younger sibs – Gen Z – involves apps.
In the first year of our company’s history, a good friend and savvy investor warned us that apps were “a fad business.” Our research – and knowledge of consumers via our research – indicated otherwise. Americans love to push a button and have something very cool happen instantaneously. Now the smartphone has moved to the car, and we saw great residuals from that for radio during the past couple days at DASH.
They bring us music, information, direction, and enhance our lives. For radio, they provide the means to help us transition to the medium’s next phase.
And now, according to Apple, there’s now more than a million of these amazing little apps.
Congratulations, and thanks to them. And thanks to the hundreds of you who have taken this techie joy ride with us.
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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Congrats on leading the APP charge.
But…Radio needs to be careful that their increasingly more awesome apps aren’t stretch limos to nowhere. While its top execs argue about whether Pandora is or isn’t radio or whether they have listenership that equals the #1 or 2 station in most markets, Pandora has amassed, by anyone’s measure, more online audience than ALL OF RADIO COMBINED. Many big radio companies whose CEOs make speeches about how radio’s localism can’t be replicated by streamers won’t let any of their stations post so much as a link to a local story on their website without corporate approval.
Broadcasters should focus less on defending and more on adapting. They should be viewing the auto industry as role models – gut checking their own innovation pace against them. Proclamations should be replaced with multiple changes of underwear.
Just sayin…
Eyes wide open is the best way to approach everything in this environment. Radio has many inherent strengths, but a sense of humility about its challenges only contributes to successfully adapting to change. Thanks for the reality check, Bob.