Smartphone apps were initiated by Steve Jobs of Apple in 2008, some eight years back. Since then several billion apps have been downloaded. The revenue generated from apps runs into billions. There are revenues from subscriptions and other fees. The market is now maturing. Building apps and promoting them is getting costlier. A few developers have captured almost half the business on Apple’s app store. Several apps are being abandoned after some time, say a single use. Apple and Google were the champions of the app economy.

It is time now to have bots, which are powered by artificial intelligence. The name is inspired by robot. Facebook is introducing chatbots which are text-based services which allow users to compete tasks such as checking news, organising meetings, ordering food or booking a flight by sending short messages.

Microsoft’s bot called Tay is designed to impersonate a milliennial. It mimics the language which it learns on Twitter and other messaging services .

Bots live on servers just like web pages. They are thus attractive to business which shy away from developing their apps. Bots are quickly installed. Users can switch between bots. Talking to bots is more appealing.

It is still to be seen whether bots will be as successful as apps. Much experimentation is needed to find their place. Bots are not going to take over the world. They will co-exist with websites and apps.