Appflation - A phenomenon to be considered for future digital services

In recent years, the society has experienced a remarkable change that induced shifts in behavior of people and companies. This effect is reinforced by the evolution of current and the emergence of new technologies such as Smartphones. In this paper it is aimed to contribute to the establishment of a research area for both academic and industrial researchers on what will be described in the following as appflation. First a brief evaluation of the effects of mobile devices and application services on the ongoing digital transformation and the customer/company relationship is provided. Second a definition of appflation is given and the origin and impact of this phenomenon is analyzed by considering the customer and the company side. This analysis is supported by a survey amongst Smartphone users, generally confirming that amongst a vast number of installed apps only a very small number actually is used. Additionally, this survey was used to briefly analyze the usage behavior of the participants in relation to the so called primary IT trends. Finally, in order to encourage researchers to advance the field future areas of interest are identified and drivers that will affect the appflation phenomenon in the future are outlined.