The app industry now has another method of creating apps - and you don't have to know how to write a single line of code.
The introduction of this new design tool called Origami, and it's contributing to the bubble that is app creation.
See this article from Wired here, which describes how Facebook's Paper was made primarily through Origami. As mentioned before here on WSO, these apps are overvalued and are given too much attention. Eventually, all bubbles have to pop, but when will this one?
Personally, I'm thinking its once the "smart" hardware markets take off more; i.e. Google Glass, Samsung Gear, whatever healthcare product Apple comes up with, etc.
I need to create some stupid app and sell it for a ridiculous price and then retire...
I don't believe the App industry is a bubble, and I don't believe their valuations to be that insane.
An app is simply a distribution channel - an easy way to distribute a product/service to consumers.
Lets take an app - Lumosity for instance. They created this great product to train your brain while taking that information to further study the human cognition (they call it "The Human Cognition Project"). So they have this product and they now have to figure out how to get it to consumers. Imagine if we didn't have apps - Lumosity would have to look at producing the hardware for their product, now taking on a ton of overhead that might make the entire project unfeasible unless they charge consumers a fee. Not to mention having to look at distributing the product through retailers,distribution costs getting it to the retailer, etc.
Apps provide this extremely cheap and accessible alternative to distribute your product.. Lumosity has this really easy platform they can use to get their product out there, and I have a really easy way to get that product.
So at the end of the day, Lumosity isn't a company that "does apps" - it's a cognitive research company that delivers its product through an app.
How would an app bubble bursting even look? It's not like it's housing and app companies don't make up any significant (if any) part of retirement funds. Who loses money? Private companies who took on high risk projects anyway, who cares.
I think it would involve the realization by Facebook and other major app purchasers that their investments are not remotely as valuable as they believe. Maybe WhatsApp isn't the greatest example because FB bought it partially to stave off competition/user migration. But I guess the relatively sudden obsolescence of overvalued apps would constitute what I picture as a "bubble popping." And sudden could mean over a span of a few months or a year.
Although, fair point, it's going to be private companies with some serious impairments/writeoffs, and won't necessarily affect the markets hugely.
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