Mobile Apps-Boon and Bane

In recent years, there has been a tremendous growth in the use of mobile phones across the globe. Users are using mobile phones for different purposes. Users want to perform most of their tasks through a mobile phone for shopping, tickets booking etc. According to ITU approx. 77% of the world’s population is online using mobile devices. So this is the reason that most of the companies are opting mobile applications/apps for their business growth. Mobile applications are software applications and developed to run on different devices like Smartphone’s, tablets and other mobile devices.

Companies are providing their mobile apps in play store/App store and a user can download the same from that source. Some of the most popular stores are Apple’s App Store, Google Play, and Windows phone store. According to statista.com there are more than 2.2 million apps in google play store and two billion apps in the apple’s play store.  It is expected that by 2020, 189 billion U.S. dollars revenue would be generated by mobile apps. There are a number of advantages of using mobile apps like Bus/Train/Airplane/ tickets booking there nohassles in booking tickets using a mobile app.

There is no need to stand in long queues in cinema halls. No need to go to shopping for your favorite book, movie or other accessories. No need to go to your bank for transferring fund, or for any other bank services etc. So we can use mobile apps for all types of services. There are many other advantages of mobile apps like a better user experience, worldwide access, client secure login, easy installation, easy update etc. This is the main reason why companies are putting more emphasis on mobile marketing through apps.

So far we have analyzed various advantages of mobiles apps but on the other side, it has many disadvantages as well. Students are concentrating more on games or messaging apps. It may be a situation that after some years we do not know any of our neighbors, yes we do know them only if they are talking to us through some mobile apps. We are trying to do everything from our mobile without any physical efforts thus we are becoming lazy and obese. On a very serious note by using a mobile app, indirectly we are making our private/sensitive information public. Companies are using this information for their personal benefits. Some companies also sell this data to other countries to have profits. Many times mobile applications are being hacked by hackers of other countries.  There are some more points on which we should give some emphasis as far as mobile apps are concern. So think before installing any mobile app.

Mr. Pramod Pandey

Assistant Professor

Dept. of Management Studies