Facebook on course to be the WeChat of the West, says Gartner

It's the beginning of the end for smartphone apps as we have known and tapped on them, reckons Gartner. The analyst is calling the start of a "post-apps" era, based on changes in consumer interactions that appear driven, in large part, by the rise of dominant messaging platforms designed to consume more and more of mobile users' time and attention. It reckons messaging apps will become more popular than social media apps within the next two years. In a new report, based on a survey of mobile users in the US, China and the UK, Gartner's reading of the app usage tea-leaves shows signs of messaging platforms cannibalizing other apps, with for example, usage of dedicated video apps declining four percentage points between the 2015 and 2016 editions of the survey. Usage of standalone maps apps also shrunk by three percentage points, year-over-year, according to Gartner's data.