question: Why do some companies create multiple apps for the products they offer instead of using one app? Uber and Uber Eats, Google Home and Google Assistant are two examples.
comment: Marketing. You get more people to use your app/product if you have different versions targeted to specific groups. It's why there a separate varieties of cold medicine in spite of all of them having identical ingredients. If presents with a choice between something generic and something that seems tailored to their specific needs, people will choose the specific one most of the time, even if there's no actual difference.
passages: In May 2016, at Google I/O 2016, Google announced two new apps: Google Allo, a messaging app with AI capabilities (AI-powered bots and selfie features) and Google Duo, a video calling app. Google's Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones released later that year were the first Google devices shipped with Duo and Allo preinstalled instead of Hangouts. Google has since confirmed that the new apps will not replace Hangouts; Hangouts will remain a separate product. In December 2018 Google announced Allo would be discontinued in March 2019 with some of its features migrated into Google Messages.
   Lieb used Flock as an example of mobile apps that will do what the user wants in the background, with little or no effort on their part.
  
  Section::::Acquisition by Google.
   In many cases, the team would make unstructured strategic decisions—such as what markets to compete in, what new production technologies to invest in, and what return on investment to require; tactical decisions like whether to build a prototype, whether to concept-test, whether to test-market, and how much to produce; and structured operational decisions like production scheduling, inventory purchases, and media flightings. In other cases, the team would confine itself to tactical and operational decisions. In either case it would need information associated with all three levels.
  
  Section::::Effects.:Greater range of users.
   BULLET::::- Shared experience effects - Experience curve effects are reinforced when two or more products share a common activity or resource. Any efficiency learned from one product can be applied to the other products. (This is related to the principle of least astonishment).
  
  Section::::The experience curve.:Experience curve discontinuities.
  
  The experience curve effect can on occasion come to an abrupt stop. Graphically, the curve is truncated. Existing processes become obsolete and the firm must upgrade to remain competitive. The upgrade will mean the old experience curve will be replaced by a new one. This occurs when:
   BULLET::::- Joint Innovation Lab
  
  Section::::New business models.:Aggregator.
  
  Network providers who choose not to create/manage their own developer relationships will partner with one or multiple aggregators, to administer a portion of or their entire application strategy. Examples of this model include:
  
  BULLET::::- Ovi Operator Partnership
  
  BULLET::::- Blackberry Operator Partnership
  
  BULLET::::- Cellmania
  
  BULLET::::- Buongiorno
  
  Section::::New business models.:Mass wholesale.
   To enable companies of all sizes to boost productivity, each app is sold individually to keep costs affordable. Small companies can start with a single app to immediately enjoy productivity boosts. Large enterprises can purchase an entire suite of apps to automate more complex business processes.
  
  As of March 2015, Hoiio has invested US3.3 million into the research and development of cloud technologies and Hoiio apps engine. 
   BULLET::::2. Hosted applications: From the 1990s traditional application service providers (ASPs) hosted (then-existing) applications on behalf of their customers. Depending on the limitation of the underlying application, ASPs were forced to host applications on separate machines (if multiple instances of the applications could not be executed in the same physical machine) or as separate processes. Multitenant applications represent a more mature architecture which enables a similar service with lower operational cost.
   For example, if there are a number of applications that require a specifically configured component, it would be possible to create a merge module that installs and configures that component. That merge module could then be added to the installation packages of each product that required that particular component. This saves the effort of having to individually add the necessary files, registry entries, and other components to every installation. It also saves time if updates are needed, as instead of updating the installations for all applications, only the merge module is updated, and the installations only need to be rebuilt.
   BULLET::::- Access control: letting each client organization independently customize access rights and restrictions for each user.
  
  Section::::Requirements.:Quality of service.
  
  Multitenant applications are expected to provide adequate isolation of security, robustness and performance between multiple tenants which is provided by the layers below the application in case of multi-instance applications.
  
  Section::::Virtualization.
  
  The costs of redesigning applications for multitenancy can be significant, especially for software vendors who continue to offer an on-premises single tenant version of their product. They end up being forced to support 2 distinct products with all the resulting costs.
   The concept of the hybrid app is a mix of native and web-based apps. Apps developed using Xamarin, React Native, Sencha Touch and other similar technology fall into this category.
  
  These are made to support web and native technologies across multiple platforms. Moreover, these apps are easier and faster to develop. It involves use of single code base which works in multiple mobile operating systems.
  
  Despite such advantages, hybrid apps exhibit lower performance. Often, apps fail to bear the same look-and-feel in different mobile operating systems.
  
  Section::::Types.:Web-based app.
   Version fragmentation happens when a firm offers multiple incompatible versions or variations of a single product, either in tandem or over time as a result of accumulated changes to product specification.
  
  Section::::Version fragmentation.:Android and iOS operating systems.
   In an email sent to Android phone manufacturers on October 5, 2016, Google announced that, starting December 1, 2016, Google Duo replaced Hangouts within the suite of Google apps Android phone makers must pre-install on devices, with Hangouts instead becoming an optional app for phone makers to pre-install.
  
  In October 2017, Google Duo was integrated into Google Phone, Contacts, and Messages on the Pixel, Nexus, and Android One phones. This integration will be brought to other Android phones and carriers in the near future.
  
  Section::::Features.
   In August 2010, developers of the OpenSignal wireless crowd-sourcing app detected 3,997 distinct values for "android.build.MODEL" among users of their app. This variable represents the device model, though it may be altered by adding a custom ROM. OpenSignal acknowledged that while this made it problematic to develop apps, the wide variety of models allows Android to enter more markets.
   The following essential features were proposed by one marketing company:
  
  BULLET::::- Deployed on a multi-tenant, elastic cloud infrastructure
  
  BULLET::::- Subscription model pricing (operating expense, not capital expenditure)
  
  BULLET::::- No software development (required connectors should already be available)
  
  BULLET::::- Users do not perform deployment or manage the platform itself
  
  BULLET::::- Presence of integration management and monitoring features
  
  The emergence of this sector led to new cloud-based business process management tools that do not need to build integration layers - since those are now a separate service.
   BULLET::::- Singly, API management company in August, 2013.
  
  Appcelerator moved to its San Jose headquarters in 2015.
  
  In January 2016, Appcelerator was acquired by Axway, a company that helps enterprises handle data flows.
  
  Section::::Products.
  
  BULLET::::- Axway Appcelerator Dashboard offers real-time analytics of the lifecycle and success of apps built on the Axway Appcelerator Mobile Solution or directly via native SDK.
  
  BULLET::::- Axway Appcelerator Studio is an open extensible development environment for building, testing and publishing native apps across mobile devices and OSs including iOS, Android.
   For example, an enterprise may concurrently use separate cloud providers for infrastructure (IaaS) and software (SaaS) services, or use multiple infrastructure (IaaS) providers. In the latter case, they may use different infrastructure providers for different workloads, deploy a single workload load balanced across multiple providers (active-active), or deploy a single workload on one provider, with a backup on another (active-passive).
   In early 2011, as the mobile BI software market started to mature and adoption started to grow at a significant pace in both small and large enterprises, most vendors adopted either a purpose-built, device-specific application strategy (e.g. iPhone or Android apps, downloaded from iTunes or the Google Play Store) or a web application strategy (browser-based, works on most devices without an application being installed on the device). This debate continues and there are benefits and drawbacks to both methods. One potential solution will be the wider adoption of HTML5 on mobile devices which will give web applications many of the characteristics of dedicated applications while still allowing them to work on many devices without an installed application.
   A/B testing is sometimes incorrectly performed in serial fashion, where a group of users one week may see one version of the product while the next week users see another. This undermines the statistical validity of the results, since external events may influence user behavior in one time period but not the other. For example, a split test of two ice cream flavors performed in serial during the summer and winter would see a marked decrease in demand during the winter where that decrease is mostly related to the weather and not to the flavor offer.
   An example is Apple and Starbucks, who announced a music partnership in 2007. The purpose of this partnership was to allow Starbucks' customers to wirelessly browse, search, preview, buy, and download music from iTunes Store onto their iPod touch, iPhone, or PC or Mac running iTunes. Apple’s leadership in digital music, together with the unique Starbucks experience, created a partnership that offered customers a world class digital music experience.
   Regardless, the possibility of dominant platforms turning the flows of data they receive from their larger user-bases into market-securing technological innovations remains a challenge. For example, Uber seeks to use the data they currently collect from drivers using their app to automate the taxi industry, thus eliminating the need for their workforce altogether and likely dropping the value of a ride below that on which a human laborer can survive.
  
  Section::::Criticisms of the viability of platform cooperatives.:Difficulty securing early-stage capital.
   BULLET::::- Apple's iOS and Google's Android in the mobile operating system market
  
  Section::::Media.
   BULLET::::- There are numerous other independent app stores for Android devices.
  
  Section::::Enterprise management.
   Section::::Motivation.:Improving financial performance or reducing risk.
  
  The dominant rationale used to explain M&A activity is that acquiring firms seek improved financial performance or reduce risk. The following motives are considered to improve financial performance or reduce risk:
  
  BULLET::::- Economy of scale: This refers to the fact that the combined company can often reduce its fixed costs by removing duplicate departments or operations, lowering the costs of the company relative to the same revenue stream, thus increasing profit margins.
   Each successful company has a unique selling proposition (USP). A USP can be created through the element of being first to a market, for example Uber was the first company to allow for taxicab hailing via mobile app. Because Uber had reached this market first, it had a USP and therefore it received loyal customers. However; with fierce competition copying Uber's business model, Uber has had to develop its service through innovation. 
  
  Section::::Problem solving.
   Collabrification came from the foundation of making mobile education more collaborative. From the start, it was designed to make something that was inherently non-collaborative and make it collaborative. The infrastructure has been used in the IMLC, University of Michigan, University of Texas, and the department of Mathematics and Information Technology at The Hong Kong Institute of Education. By building real-time, synchronous collaboration into mobile infrastructure, people build on the Four C's: critical thinking, communications, collaboration, and creativity. Collabrification of mobile and web applications allows people to build relationships, increase shared understanding, increase productivity, organize thoughts, and make mobile technology, specifically related to mobile applications, more fun and engaging.
  