First came free-to-play games, then chat apps. Now, some in the tech-nology industry are predicting that the next mobile craze to arrive in the west from Asia will be home screen customisation apps that give smartphones a radical new look.
Hundreds of millions of people have already downloaded these “super-apps”, which range from changing wallpaper and icon design to a more radical reimagining of how smartphone software should work, personalised to individual users.
According to recent research by Flurry, which monitors mobile apps, global usage of these services for devices running Android has increased more than tenfold in the past year.