Wow!
The usage of mobile apps for social media and messaging services like What’s App? has tripled last year!
Say Mashable and Statista, as you can gather from that chart just published by Mashable
I wonder how that stat would look like for event apps…?
In a world where responsive design of event webpages becomes more and more important, my best guess is that the hype around mobile event apps as such (as I listed them a while ago on this blog) is over now.
Resulting in a decreasing use of native event apps rather than an increase!
What do you guys think? Any numbers available?
I know a lot of event app providers read my blog, so I look forward to your comments!
EVENT MARKETING BLOG 
Whats the adaption rate and reason conferences still arent using apps? I go to a lot of conferences and havent used an app yet, but would find it very useful beyond the normal brochure Im usually handed. Is it the money that the companies are asking or just that the event companies arent seeing results from the apps?
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Interactive Mobile Concepts.
LikeLike
Hi, John, I guess it is still seen as a “nice to have” – yet, with mobile penetration constantly on the rise, organizers will have to respond to the needs of the audience. Responsive design is a must, in my opinion. There are tools like the wordpress themes from Julius Solaris http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/wordpress-event-manager-theme/ are responsive and offer great mobile capabilities.
An app makes sense when the features offered go beyond what a great mobile theme can offer – like networking, games or other added values.
LikeLike
Quite an interesting information, if it was possible to incorporate and connect events with social media somehow, there would be a chance to increase popularity of an app considerably.
LikeLike
Good question.
I can’t put an exact number on the growth overall, but we are a) experiencing a company growth which is higher than triple and still have a constant influx of competitors. That means that that the market growth is much higher.
There are also regional differences.
As per the attendee numbers and usage rates, they depend on the industry. We consider 50-60% okay, but meetings with 80-100% are not unheard of.
Money is an entry barrier, but prices are dropping, or, with us, quite low already.
I agree with Michael: responsive is a must, but still no replacement. Apps And websites with their own semantics serve very different purposes.
LikeLike
Now day’s people are using more and more apps to get into business and customers too are finding it easy to use their apps to search what they want. In my opinion apps for events is a good option. The event planner gets to know how many people are interested and people also usually are interested to find how much gathering would be there at the event, and hence they plan.
LikeLike
I agree that responsive web design is not a replacement for apps.
Mobile apps, especially native, are faster, more fluent, give more opportunities (for app users and app owners). HTML5 is taking over that part of the market, which isn’t mobile apps target anyway.
For example: Sli.do (web application) is great toll for conferences, but only for one thing: voting – people do not need to download app, so the voting is faster. If conference organiser need a more complex toll with long list of features, then mobile app is much, much better.
LikeLike
You are right. A lot of event app developers read your blogs regularly to enrich themselves with proper information on mobile event apps.
Oh! I forgot something. Don’t forget to check whether your event app is social media friendly and support all social networks. This is essential so that you can share all your event updates in social networks using one single app.
LikeLike