Stock apps are your real competition
By: Samir Javer
Tags: Product Design, Product Management, Startup, Product, Software Development

When building a product, or starting a company, we tend to focus only on direct competitors.

If you’re building for a specific vertical (i.e. legal), this could be a competing product in that market, or if you’re building a consumer product, this could be an app that offers mirrored functionality (i.e. Instagram / Snapchat).

However, I believe this is short-sighted. While direct competitors are no doubt a legitimate threat, the products that offer the most threat are the ones your users don’t even have to think about adopting.

At the end of the day, every user has a job to be done, and they will, generally, adopt the product that has the optimal balance of lowest friction, highest value.

This is why I believe it is not direct competitors that pose the biggest threat, but rather stock apps. What do I mean by stock apps?

These are apps that come pre-installed on your device, out of the box.

For Mac or iOS users, this means apps like Notes, Reminders, and Calendar. For Android users, it’s Google products like YouTube, Gmail, and Hangouts.

I believe stock apps are the competition to your products that we should talk more about — and I’ll explain three reasons why in this post.

Stock apps come pre-installed.

Believe it or not, one of the biggest points of friction in getting users to adopt a product is simply getting them to download it.

Don’t believe it? Here’s some stats:

The majority of U.S. smartphone users download zero apps per month.

60% of the apps in the App Store have never been downloaded.

For the early adopter types who love trying out new products, this may seem far-fetched, but for the majority of the market, it is indeed the case.

All the major tech companies have recognized this, and it’s why many of them have invested so heavily in ensuring their apps come pre-installed, out of the box, on mainstream devices.

It’s why Google paid $50 million to acquire Android; so that the 86% global smartphone market share it owns can ship devices that all look like this:

By Google paying a meagre $50 million to own the Android ecosystem, they are automatically able to pre-install all their mobile products onto the 2.5 billion active Android devices worldwide.

Not only does this mean Android users are more likely to use Google products, it also means significant revenue from advertisements on YouTube and Google searches, as well as mass user data collection from Google Maps and YouTube, all of which leads to a more optimized Google search experience — driven by ads and recommendations.

It’s also why giants like Facebook attempted to build their own smartphones, coming pre-installed with the likes of Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram.

Amazon, similarly, released its own Fire Phone, which quickly fizzled out, though the Fire Tablet remains on the market today — coming with Kindle, Audible, Prime Video, and IMDb installed, which are all Amazon properties.

When you own the device, you ultimately dictate which products the majority of your customers end up using.

It’s why Apple, which had previously included Google Maps as a pre-installed app on iPhones, ended up building its own maps product in 2012, and then removing Google Maps off its devices.

Just four years later, Apple Maps was being used on 78% of all iOS devices.

Stock apps are familiar.

Remember the first time you unboxed your first ever iPhone? What apps did you immediately start playing around with?

If you’re like most people, was likely things like FaceTime, Safari, and Notes.

You’d tried your friends’ iPhones, seen the ads from Apple, and these apps were the first thing you saw on your home screen.

And if you’re a Mac user, as most iOS users are, you were already familiar with the Apple ecosystem, so there was no learning curve with these apps.

Here’s a good test: what apps do your parents regularly use? Or how about your grandparents?

They’re likely using Apple’s Reminders app to keep tabs on all their errands, the Notes app to write down grocery lists, and Safari to open links that their friends and family email or text them.

And why did they choose to use these apps? Because they were already there. They were familiar, and they didn’t have to go search for an alternative.

There’s nothing wrong with this, by the way — it’s just an interesting phenomenon.

My point is that stock apps are the ultimate barrier to entry for new apps; especially on mobile.

It’s why I believe that:

If you’re building products for everyday consumers, build for the lowest common denominator.

It’s why Apple will never build something like Asana or Evernote; they’ve deliberately built a one-size-fits-all Notes application, because of how widespread their customer base is.

That being said, if you have clear product-market fit with a customer segment, absolutely focus on building for them — even if it means a complex product. Good examples of this are Notion and Coda.

Stock apps play nicely with your other devices.

Because the consumer hardware market is dominated by the likes of Apple and Google, by default, you likely already own multiple devices from the same provider.

It should be no surprise then that the average American household owns nearly 3 Apple products.

The beauty of iCloud or G Suite is that all of your content, by default, automatically syncs between all your devices, meaning you never have to worry about duplicating or transferring data.

This is a huge sticking point for apps like Calendar, Notes, and Reminders — you’ll never forget about any of the content on there, regardless of what device you’re on, thanks to seamless cross-device syncing and notifications.

Cross-device syncing has now become a standard consumer expectation; not just a nice-to-have. So if you’re building a productivity app on mobile, you sure better decrease the friction in getting users to access your web / desktop product.

On the flip side, third-party apps aren’t always compatible with your other devices, for a variety of reasons, such as:

They may not have built apps for all other platforms

Cross-device syncing may be how they monetize (i.e. Evernote, Bear)

With stock apps, you don’t have to worry about any of this; because the multiple hardware platforms are all owned by the same vendor (Apple / Google), by default, they’ll build these stock apps for all their platforms. And you’ll never have to pay for it.

In summary, here are the key takeaways:

The biggest moat you can own is the device.

It’s why It’s why I believe, as hard as it has proven to be, more companies should experiment with building hardware, in an attempt to build out a true device ecosystem. When you own the device, you own the experience. Focus on familiarity over features.

Contrary to common belief, most products don’t get adopted just because of their features. They often get adopted because of their simplicity and intuitiveness. Build with the end-to-end experience in mind.

Consumer expectations have heightened, and from the very beginning, they’ll be expecting your product to be available on all their platforms, and for the handoff to be seamless between them. If not, they may very well churn for the simpler, less functional product that does that job well.