Bank payment, online education, home appliance use, etc., and more and more APP——
Are there more and more apps in mobile phones? Bank payment, online education, home appliance use, work clocking... mobile apps with numerous and scattered functions and a number of 50 or 60 at random often make people "unable to find the north", which not only occupy a large amount of mobile phone memory, but also bring inconvenience to use. What causes APP redundancy? What might be the impact of this phenomenon? Is there a good way to slim down?
Increasingly crowded mobile phone screens
How many apps are there in the phone? "22", "nearly 40", "more than 30, still increasing" - respondents said so.
Ms. Zhao, a Beijing resident, combed out the APP in her mobile phone: part of them were apps that were frequently used and actively downloaded in daily life, such as Alipay, WeChat, Taobao, Jingdong, Meituan, Dianping, Hema, Tiaoyin, Baidu Maps, etc. There were more than 10 apps in total; There are also more than 10 apps that are only occasionally used but will cause inconvenience if they are not downloaded, such as those that pay parking fees, pay traffic fines, buy train tickets, pay salaries, pay provident funds, and frequently visit hospitals; She has two educational APPs, high school and primary school, and there are nearly 10 APPs that regularly publish scores, submit homework, practice English, and online classes; In addition, she has 3 apps for her own work. "If you install a camera at home, there will be more than one APP on your mobile phone. With more than 30 APPs, your mobile phone memory is not enough," said Ms. Zhao.
During the interview, many people complained that there were too many bank APPs, which was unnecessary. "I have the most APPs from major banks on my mobile phone. Taking ICBC as an example, I downloaded 2, while in the app store, there are only 6 APPs from ICBC." Yuan Song, an office worker living in Beijing, told reporters that, "Other bank APPs, such as Agricultural Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, etc., most banks have multiple subordinate APPs with different functions, and feel that the functions can be integrated together." He said that some banks classify the functions of the APP, focusing on local life, loans and information interconnection, and online shopping mall consumption. "Go to the bank to open an account, and there will be two or three more APPs in the mobile phone" has become the focus of consumers' "complaints".
Work "clocking" APP is also a common area of redundancy. Lin Jing, who works in the education system of a city in Zhejiang Province, told reporters that she once had 23 government affairs APPs on her mobile phone, and she spent two or three hours on these government affairs APPs every day. Lin Jing wondered: Do you really need to punch in and complete the hard requirements for some less important content?
While bringing convenience to consumers, smart appliances also increase the number of APP in mobile phones. Jia Xiyuan, who owns two cats at home, said that the automatic cat litter basin, cat water dispenser and automatic feeder she purchased are three different brands, and each machine needs to download the corresponding APP for control. "This requires consumers to either buy products of the same brand or spend a lot of time corresponding to the mobile phone memory one by one." Jia Xiyuan said, "In order to control all smart appliances at home, I downloaded seven or eight APPs, which makes smart appliances appear less' smart '."
"With the explosive growth of the number of APPs, users' mobile screens are increasingly crowded, and information overload has become the norm. Excessive redundancy of APPs has caused problems for consumers and developers. This phenomenon is common in all countries. A foreign survey data shows that on average, 80 different APPs are installed on each handset, while the average number of APPs used every day is 9." Zhou Qingjie, Executive Dean of the New Business Economics Research Institute of Beijing Technology and Business University, told reporters, "The more digital innovation, the better. We should adhere to the principle of solving the main needs of users and reducing the burden of APP."
Why more and more
Why are there more and more mobile apps? On the one hand, it stems from the rapid development of digital economy.
Zhou Qingjie believes that China's digital economy has developed rapidly and achieved remarkable results, which has become a new driving force for China's economic growth and an important engine for high-quality development. "In recent years, China has continued to form breakthroughs in the fields of information technology advantages such as 5G, the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, blockchain, and accelerated the promotion of industrial applications, providing strong support for the vigorous development of the digital economy." Zhou Qingjie said, "In addition, China has become a big manufacturing country, the only country in the world with all the industries listed in the UN Industrial Classification, and the most complete industrial system in the world. Today, with the rapid development of the industrial Internet, this has brought more dividends to the development of the digital economy. This has provided a good 'water source' for the development of APP."
On the other hand, China's active mobile Internet users provide traffic sources for APP.
According to the China Mobile Internet 2024 Spring Report released by QuestMobile, a business intelligence data service provider, on May 7, as of March 2024, the monthly active users of China Mobile Internet had reached 1.232 billion, an increase of 20 million over the same period of the previous year. At the same time, user stickiness continues to grow. The total number of mobile Internet users throughout the network has reached 203.96 billion hours, an increase of 11.6 billion hours over the previous year, Behind this, mobile video, mobile social networking and mobile shopping continue to attract traffic, with growth contribution rates of 46.7%, 21.8% and 10.7% respectively.
"China has a strong domestic demand market formed by more than 1.4 billion people, a large number of netizens and digital consumers, and the penetration rate of various digital applications is at the forefront of the world," said Zhou Qingjie, "This has further deepened the penetration depth and breadth of mobile Internet, formed a stable user increment and user stickiness, and provided a foundation for the development of various APP and digital and intelligent transformation of various industries."
However, all kinds of APPs, while improving their intelligence and facilitating life, are also burdening users and bringing hidden dangers that cannot be ignored with the increasing number of APPs.
Zhou Qingjie introduced that, with the rapid development of the digital economy, new problems such as algorithm abuse, platform monopoly, data leakage, infringement of personal privacy, infringement of intellectual property rights, and network crimes have also emerged. Mobile APP is a frequent area for such problems. "It needs to formulate systematic countermeasures from the aspects of legal system improvement, market supervision, industrial development, etc." Zhou Qingjie said, "First, on the basis of improving laws and regulations such as the Anti monopoly Law and the Personal Information Protection Law, pay attention to new problems and constantly optimize the system supply; Secondly, we should strengthen market supervision, take multiple measures to improve the governance capacity of digital development, and standardize market order against data abuse and network security problems. "
Optimize functions and integrate them
How to alleviate the overcrowding of users' mobile phone screens?
Experts suggest that this problem involves many parties, and the whole society needs to make comprehensive efforts to address it. Before the development of APP, guidance and necessary review should be carried out, and supervision should be carried out during the use of APP. Violations should be included in the blacklist or withdrawn. At the same time, relevant APP should be encouraged to integrate.
"This means that developers should not only optimize functions and reduce redundancy, but also follow user behavior habits and market rules to launch updates in a timely and appropriate manner, rather than blindly following the trend, excessive trial and error, and increasing the burden on users." Zhou Qingjie believes that it should establish and improve the APP development review system, consider the necessity and practicality of APP construction, and avoid repeated construction and idle resources, In particular, it is necessary to avoid multiple departments in one unit acting independently and create multiple APP with decentralized functions; Data sharing should be established, business barriers should be broken, and different business APPs should be integrated; An APP use evaluation system should also be implemented to timely clean up the APP with very few downloads and low user evaluation. For example, a bank can unify several APPs with different functional orientations into one; Some ticket booking and fee paying APPs can be transformed into small programs through cooperation with common platforms.
In December last year, the Central Cyber Security and Information Technology Commission issued Several Opinions on the Prevention and Control of "Formalism at the Fingertip", calling for strengthening the standardized and standardized management of government mobile Internet applications, government public accounts and work groups. At the Digital Government Sub forum of the 7th Digital China Construction Summit held on May 24 this year, Dai Xiaohui, vice president and secretary-general of China Communications Standardization Association, released the Research Report on the Standardization of Government Mobile Internet Applications, which showed that since the release of Several Opinions on Preventing "Fingertip Formalism", some APPs have been taken off the shelves, reducing the burden on grassroots. However, there are too many repeated construction of government affairs APP, and the degree of intensive construction is low. There are still many problems in the APP, such as check-in, clocking, score ranking, photo forwarding, excessive pursuit of leaving traces, excessive collection of personal information, and abnormal withdrawal in the use process. It is necessary to further promote the implementation of this opinion through standardization work.
Mobile phone users complain about more and more apps. On the one hand, they occupy memory, and on the other hand, they worry about the leakage and abuse of personal information, because many apps need to fill in real personal information to complete registration. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has also issued relevant policies to continuously address the privacy and security concerns of users. The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that in the first quarter of this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology continued to make efforts to improve the standard system, issued the national standard "Technical Requirements for the Protection of Personal Information of Telecommunications and Internet Service Users", formulated 11 industry standards such as "Requirements for the Management System of Personal Information of Telecommunications and Internet Applications", and guided enterprises to operate in compliance. Strengthen problem rectification, organize APP technology testing, and effectively purify the service environment. Deepen the source control, urge the app store to strictly launch the review, and increase the qualification rate of on shelf APP spot check by 20% year-on-year in the first quarter; Promote mainstream SDKs such as Getui, Evoque and Youmeng to carry out privacy configuration capability certification, guide terminal manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo to carry out signature verification in the APP installation process, and improve terminal security protection capabilities.
"I believe that with the joint efforts of all parties, APP redundancy can be alleviated and users can get a simple and clean mobile phone screen." Zhou Qingjie said.
(Source: "Netcom Zhejiang")
(Link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/7uFSMhk1JRAnSL4LWZscWw ）
