OPINION: Why does everything need an app nowadays?

Businesses are competing for a permanent place on your phone.

There was a time when downloading an app felt optional. Today, it often feels like part of the transaction.

Buying coffee, ordering food, booking flights, paying bills, shopping online, earning loyalty points, checking into hotels, scheduling medical appointments, even parking a car increasingly begin with the same instruction: Download the app.

For consumers, it can feel like every company wants a permanent place on their phones. That is not happening by accident.

An app has become one of the most valuable business assets a company can have. It keeps customers inside a brand’s ecosystem, makes transactions easier, strengthens loyalty programs, and gives businesses a direct line to their customers.

But the role of apps has expanded well beyond convenience. Increasingly, they are becoming the gateway to the service itself.

Banking provides one of the clearest examples. Customers once relied on SMS to receive one-time passwords that verified transactions. Today, more banks are moving authentication into their mobile apps, making the app itself part of the security process. What was once simply a tool for checking balances or transferring money has become part of how customers access and protect their accounts.

The same pattern is beginning to appear elsewhere.

Apps are sometime no longer optional

Loyalty cards have become digital memberships. Boarding passes have become QR codes stored inside an app. Promotions are unlocked only after signing in.

Restaurant discounts, supermarket rewards, and exclusive offers are increasingly reserved for app users. In many cases, the app is no longer just another option. It is where the full customer experience now lives.

That helps explain why businesses across almost every industry now have one. Banks, retailers, restaurants, airlines, pharmacies, supermarkets, courier services, telcos, insurers, and even government agencies are investing heavily in mobile apps because they strengthen customer relationships long after the first purchase.

The challenge is that consumers carry only one phone.

Every app competes for storage, attention, and a place on the home screen. Some become part of everyday life. Others are downloaded for a single purchase, a vacation, or a limited-time promotion, only to remain installed months later because deleting them feels inconvenient if they might be needed again.

That small dilemma captures a much larger change in how businesses compete.

Companies once fought for visibility in shopping malls, newspapers, television commercials, and busy commercial streets. Today, they are also competing for space on a device that most people reach for dozens of times a day. Being installed on a customer’s phone means being easier to find, easier to remember, and only a tap away from the next transaction.

Perhaps that is why so many companies want an app of their own.

They are no longer simply asking customers to visit a store or browse a website. They want to become part of everyday routines, whether that means making a payment, earning a reward, confirming an identity, or placing an order.

Maybe the competition today extends beyond products, prices, and promotions.

It is also a competition for one of the most valuable pieces of digital real estate in business today: a permanent place on your phone.