Nobody Wants Your Branded App
The home screen is full. A store that needs an install to be usable has already lost the person who wanted a bottle.
The home screen is full.
The unused icons are a graveyard of brand ambition.
A store that needs an install to be usable has already lost the person who just wanted a bottle, a sofa, a refill.
There is a meeting in which someone says the words "our app."
They mean loyalty.
They mean push.
They mean a little logo next to the bank and the camera.
They do not mean the customer's phone, which already has more icons than willpower.
What people actually do with apps
YouGov, January 2025: 37% of Americans have 21 or more apps.
24% have 11–20. A 2024 YouGov / CSG figure often cited alongside this: 70% had downloaded 20 or fewer.
The home screen is not an infinite shelf.
It is a small, defended surface.
DataReportal's Digital 2025 (GWI, Q3 2024) is the global twin: the typical user has about 40 apps installed and uses about 16 in a month.
Twenty-four icons are already dead.
Yours will be the twenty-fifth unless it does a job the browser cannot.
Sensor Tower and the app stores will sell you download charts.
Downloads are not use.
Use is not purchase.
Purchase is not a reason to force an install before a first order.
What an app is for
An app is for something you open daily, or something that must run offline, or something that needs a camera, a wallet, a scanner in a way the mobile web still cannot do cleanly.
A cosmetics catalog is not that.
A furniture lookbook is not that.
A "shop our story" wrapper around the same site is not that.
McKinsey's agentic commerce work makes the ask even stranger.
The next buyer may never open your UI at all.
Asking them to install a binary first is a joke told in the wrong decade.
What to build instead
A mobile site that is fast, installable if someone wants it (that is what a PWA is for), and honest about account and checkout.
A wallet pass or an email that can be found without a home-screen icon.
A refill reminder that does not require a new silo of login.
If you have a real reason for native — AR placement that the browser still mangles, a studio tool, a clientele service that is actually used every week — build that.
Do not build a branded icon as a strategy.
The brands that win on phones will be the ones that respect the ones already there.
How we think about it at BuonaLabs
We default to the web.
We make it good enough that an app is an extra, not a gate.
If a client asks for native, we ask what job is impossible in the browser.
If the answer is "presence," we decline the presence.
Nobody wants your branded app.
They wanted the thing inside it.
Sources
https://today.yougov.com/technology/articles/51416-how-many-apps-do-americans-have-on-their-phones
https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2025-deep-dive-the-state-of-mobile-and-app-engagement-in-2025
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-agentic-commerce-opportunity-how-ai-agents-are-ushering-in-a-new-era-for-consumers-and-merchants
BuonaLabs is a digital innovation studio in Lübeck, Germany, building product pages, digital twins, and commerce experiences that try to tell the truth about the object. If this is the work you are trying to do, let's talk.