Well according to an article on the Beeb, the humble smartphone app, all 4.5 million of them could be on the way out. User apathy, relentless updates and the fact they waste so much space on your phone are reasons cited.
So what will replace them?
Apparently "bots".
These programs, thanks to AI [artificial intelligence] software in the cloud, can chat to humans via text, extract the meaning and then act on it.
They are little digital helpers.
Any time you see a live chat box open up on a retailer's website, or order a taxi or flowers through chat platforms such as WeChat and Facebook Messenger, you're most likely talking to a bot.
So rather than downloading multitudes of bloatware apps, you can download a small bot, which allows you to interact with the product or service you want to use. It seems all the big boys can see which way the wind is blowing, with Facebook announcing a bot framework to make it easier for developers to create bots.
I must admit, I rarely use the majority of apps on my phone, and they do seem to want to update every month, (along with everything else these days 
). I like the idea of just interacting with a bot, preferably by voice to get things done. We are starting to go down this road with the likes of Apples Siri which is getting much better.
As with all things new, the key question is how to make any money from it 
