many people read this as “vibe coded apps are bad so no adoption”, or... "it's all about taste - vibe coded apps don't have it"
NO - it's not that simple
as an insider let me share the deeper dynamics here:
1. even releasing a high quality app has never meant automatically getting adoption. people don’t scroll app store all day to see what are the latest 67000 apps just released
adoption of consumer apps depends on distribution - either you have a massive number of followers who’ll try your stuff, or you run ads with a lot of money. vibe coding doesn’t help people solve distribution so it’s completely unsurprising that app releases don’t correlate with adoption
2. with AI, people are going to need less and less apps. why would i switch between 5 different shopping apps if i can do everything in chatgpt? more and more things are getting done by agents, and people will just use one super app to talk to their agent. many new apps become pointless and will be rebuilt as a tool for agents instead
so.. if i get this right, app adoption will not just stay flat - it will decrease over time, and increasingly concentrate on a small number of super apps
and i think that’s a good thing. i want to turn on my phone and see a clean home screen with just a few things i need to think about, not 500 apps each sending me notifications trying to make me a DAU
Massive output uptick due to agentic AI. Complete flat adoption.