Apps. Gerard Goggin

earliest instances of the word “app” and its plural “apps”; these occurred in Computerworld magazine in the early 1980s. “Killer app” is a term recorded as appearing in the late 1980s. It was short for “killer application,” meaning something indispensable or without a rival (OED). As software and computing historian Martin Campbell-Kelly explains, “[t]he ‘killer app’ hypothesis argues that a novel application, by enabling an activity that was previously impossible or too expensive, causes a new technology to become widely adopted” (Campbell-Kelly, 2003, p. 212). The moniker “killer app” was applied for instance to VisiCalc. VisiCalc was an application launched in 1979 that brought the spreadsheet to personal computing, paving the way for the PC to be taken seriously as a business tool (pp. 212–214). For some time, “apps” designated a diverse range of software applications for desktop or enterprises computers, handhelds (such as the Palm), Internet and web apps, and then, increasingly, mobile phones. For instance, applications for the mobile Internet wireless access protocol (WAP) were sometimes referred to as “WAP apps.” At this stage, though, “mobile apps” could still refer mostly to applications and design solutions for mobile hardware and devices—not necessarily just to software.

This changes from roughly 2001 onwards. That year saw an increase in the frequency of references to mobile apps and handheld apps—or, in the US context, wireless apps—across a range of news and journalism outlets, especially in the trade and business press. This is not surprising, given the industry’s growing focus on mobile applications development and the efforts to develop more content and services for emerging 2G and 3G mobile services. At the premier mobile industry event 3GSM World Congress in 2003 there were announcements of new commercial ventures designed to expand mobile app development and distribution. At this juncture, vendors were still seeking to link up mobile devices with software applications and data running on enterprise networks and services—the Canadian company Blackberry, for instance, was reported as aiming to “mobilise apps” (Moore, 2004).

      As we shall see, apps really became a household word from 2008 onwards. To understand how this app moment came about, we’ll shortly have a look at some of the kinds of technologies, social developments, and media cultures that created the conditions for apps to become a household word. In the meanwhile, let’s see how apps work as a technology.

      As software, apps cannot work without hardware. The key hardware for apps is the smartphone. The smartphone combines three previously separate functions: cellular mobile telecommunications; mobile Internet; and mobile computing. If you dismantle a smartphone, you will find a CPU (central processing unit). This is a computer chip that is typically integrated into a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) SoC (system-on-a-chip) application processor. You will also find a power source in the form of a rechargeable battery. There will be one or more antennae (transducers) for receiving and transmitting data via electromagnetic waves in order to handle a range of different signals from cellular networks, Bluetooth, WiFi (wireless fidelity), the GPS (global positioning system), or NFC (near field communication). These may not all be housed in the same chip, but rather crammed into the device housings. Added to which, the antennae may be all in use at once, to help run apps across one, two, or all GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, cellular mobile, and other networks (Hu & Tanner, 2018).

A smartphone usually contains a display. Layered over the screen is a touch screen. Typically this is a capacitive touchscreen, which senses a conductor such as the human finger, a stylus, or a glove with a conductive thread. Smartphones have notable audio capabilities in the form of small speakers used for input or output, music, speech, video, and other forms of audio. They have cameras, often very sophisticated ones—and, for some time, two cameras: a main one, rear-facing and of high resolution, and another, front-facing and of lower resolution, which is especially optimized for “selfies” and other kinds of mobile photography and video-making practice. Smartphones also have varying capacity to work with accessories such as headphones and with the different input options that accessories require. In addition to these capabilities, developed over the past forty or so years, smartphones incorporate a range of sensors that include gyroscopes, accelerometers, magnetometers, and promixity meters.

      Smartphones have grown considerably in sophistication and capabilities, operating as they do at the frontiers of material science and technology, engineering, and computing, as well as interface, user experience, and other user-oriented disciplines. The hardware ensemble offered by smartphones provides a generative “base” or “matrix” for what apps can and cannot do. Apps have sent smartphones into the stratosphere as a consumer technology, so the software very much maketh the device. Conversely, for all their real and imaginary potential, apps remain anchored in the materialities of devices, their social contexts, and what users make of them.

Hence it is vital to understand that the proportion of people with access to smartphones varies significantly across different parts of the world, as well as across diverse groups and demographics. A survey carried out in 2018 by the US-based Pew Research Center found that, while there was an estimated 5 billion people in the world with mobile phones, only a little more than half of them had smartphones. Specifically, its data showed that “a median of 76 percent across 18 advanced economies surveyed have smartphones, compared with a median of only 45 percent in emerging economies [9 surveyed]” (Taylor & Silver, 2019, p. 3). While comparable data are not available yet for 2021, it is highly likely that a large proportion of the world’s mobile phone users will be using instead what is called “feature phones.” Feature phone users may not be able to access apps, the operating systems that support them, or the features that smartphones offer—or at least not at the same level as the users of more fully featured smartphones. There are various reasons why people continue to use feature phones: cost saving, long battery life, ease of use, compactness, digital detoxing, simpler interfaces, lack of need or desire for additional features or apps (Nagpal & Lyytinen, 2013; Petrovčič et al., 2016). Feature phones support music players, radio, SMS, limited Internet connectivity and web browsing, and email. In recent years, there has been a burgeoning market in what Jeffrey James dubs the “smart feature phone revolution,” especially in developing countries—which, he notes, is an important way in which the Internet is made available to many users at the bottom of the pyramid (James, 2020). Increasingly, there appear “hybrid” phones that incorporate as many smartphone features—especially in relation to mobile Internet, data, and apps—as is possible for a cheap and robust phone (Purnell, 2019). These hybrids include the JioPhone, provided by the Indian provider Jio, or phones using the KaiOs, such as those produced in partnership with Orange in Africa and the Middle East. Hence such feature phones do offer popular apps, for example Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Search, Google Maps, as well as money transfer and other services. However, these apps can be difficult to use, given the constraints in computing power and hardware capability, as well as the challenges of connectivity and cost. We do not know very much about the nature and extent of app use in feature phones (James, 2020). This said, it is fair to say that the dialectic between the “have less” and the “have more” sections of the world’s mobile communication users is ongoing. This tension casts the apps—their role, the place where we think they fit into our media—in a different light. It underscores that where the smartphone, the feature phone, and mobile communication in general will go in the coming years is an open question, but one that will be especially consequential for the future of apps.

      While synonymous with mobile communication, apps are also used with a growing range of other hardware. Many mobile apps are adapted and deployed for desktop and laptop computer use, and vice-versa. Leading brands, from Microsoft through Apple to Google, make a virtue of the fact that their apps work across the ecosystem of devices—especially the troika of mobile, tablet, and desktops or laptops. Other hardware for which apps have been systematically developed and widely used are tablets, TV sets, and watches and other “wearables.” Apps also feature in technologies such as cars, fridges, homes, gaming devices, VR headsets, and voice-activated devices such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home. With the developments referred to as the Internet of Things, apps have acquired the potential to be designed for and installed in a range of low-power devices. They need to be customized for particular kinds of equipment and configurations, as each technology has different characteristics, architecture, affordances, contexts, and uses.

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