Have we reached the end of app innovation?

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With Apple having announced recently that apps have now been downloaded a total of 25 billion times on its App Store, it is clear that mobile phone applications are the current status quo. But is there still anything to innovate?

A recent trawl of the Featured page on Apple's iPhone App store - the place where they highlight innovative apps - revealed a lacklustre selection.

One app allowed you to make photo-slideshows, hardly innovative; another was an official rugby app for the 6 nations; another was a budget and finance manager (hooray another to add to the 200 already in the store); the rest consisted of games.

A key concern of mine is that many apps are simply cookie-cutter apps; developers get web pages and format them nicely for your phone - this isn't innovation. A new Rugby App for example displays scores, the latest news, player biographies - where's the interaction? Where's making use of the features which a phone has over a computer? All this information could have been obtained on a website.

Innovation at the moment seems to be coming in the form of gaming, really utilising all of the iPhone's features. There are however many spin-offs of the exact same game with different backgrounds and characters, such as some avian animals who never seem to be too happy - having made their way everywhere from Rio to Space.

Perhaps everyone is moving to create iPad Apps? Maybe, there's an innovative app that turns your iPad into a synthesiser; another is a musical interactive storybook and another allows you to "compare and explore fractions."

There are some innovations on the tablet front but despite these many of the featured apps were  just bigger versions of the iPhone app re-designed such as the Rugby app or the TED app.

Is this the end of app innovation? I hope not, but only time will tell.

You may also be interested in: The Best iPhone Apps for Londoners.

Image: Apple.

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