Over 32 million Italians use mobile devices (ie smartphones and tablets) every month to access the internet. This is 82% of the online population. Furthermore, as many as 41% of these individuals only surf from mobile. Telephones and tablets are therefore our preferred channel for accessing the web. On them, much of the use goes from applications that we can download (free, in freemium mode or for a fee) from Apple's or Google's digital stores: App Store and Google Play Store.

According to the numbers just released by the Mobile B2c Strategy Observatory of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, however, our relationship with the ubiquitous applications is rather contradictory. It almost seems to say that the more we have at our disposal, the less we unload. And even less we use it. In a fratricidal struggle for our limited attentional resources.

To grasp the size of the contrast it is perhaps necessary to start from a number. Indeed, from the numbers: those of the applications available on the platforms of the two Californian giants. That of the Apple hosts over 2 million applications, that of Big G over 3.6. And these are unofficial and firm figures for 2017: there is certainly to be seen again on the upside.

Well. According to the research of the Politecnico di Milano each Italian user has downloaded about 22 applications on his device. Too bad that you actually use only 12. An already low number that goes down further to 9 if you consider the programs launched during the last month. On the average day, however, only 4.5 are used.

On the one hand, therefore, a bombastic offer, a forest of applications that also guarantees developers rich earnings - not by chance engaged in a war with no holds barred, in Italy the market is worth 1.5 billion euros, in the United States 110 billion - on the other hand a mobile user stuck in the "walled garden" of the same apps that have been monitoring the rankings of the most downloaded titles for years, especially in the area of ​​free ones.

The most downloaded of the 2018 on the App Store are for example WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Messenger, Google Maps and Spotify. Yet according to the analysis company App Annie, 194 billion applications and games downloads were made last year, for a total cost of 101 billion dollars. There is therefore also a lot to pay and a lot to consider for the so-called "in-app" purchases, that is inside the applications to buy game objects or more complete and versatile versions. Even if, in the end, our experience of use seems really basic: few apps and almost always the same.

On the App Store, visited every week by half a billion users and recently become a real magazine with lots of editorial content, tips and guides, almost 300 thousand free and paid games stand out. Over the years, developers have earned $ 120 billion. On Google Play Store, on the other hand, it has over one billion active users a month from 190 countries in the world. The total downloads only between May 2017 and May 2018 were 94 billion and 8 billion are downloaded a month on a global scale.

But how do you choose an application? In other words, how do you get to downloading it? According to the Polytechnic, the main channels are store research (13%), word of mouth and advice from friends and relatives (10%) and the starting website (7%). After the download, the challenge for companies then passes to the so-called "retention" of users, that is the ability to hold them and actually let them use the app. in this sense, a fundamental factor is usability: it is, in fact, an element that affects the rating of applications and, moreover, 44% of those who surf with a smartphone state that they have used a different brand app due to usability problems .

But if 22 applications are downloaded in Italy, how are you doing in the rest of the world? Also for App Annie, the highest number of apps installed is located in South Korea, the United States and Japan, where the threshold of 100 programs installed on each phone is exceeded. In China, the average is lower, with just over 50 apps on each device, perhaps because there are gigantic ecosystems, such as WeChat, which collect a vast number of services and make the use of other applications substantially useless. According to that report, the world average of active use would still move 30-40 applications into the fork.