Will chatbots really kill the app store?

I recently came across the following article: Chatbots will soon kill the app store. In a nutshell the author states:

Messenger apps are huge already

Granted, we also believe this, that’s why we are investing in building Kezmo, a customizable messaging platform that can be setup on premises, so Enterprises can get the best of both worlds.

Chatbots are going to be huge (yyuuuuge)

We believe that chatbots will play a major role in the future of human computer interactions, and yes we think they are going to act as the trojan horse for the arrival of artificial intelligence. Still, the hype around the subject does not quite match the fundamentals. I don’t on a daily basis use or interact with any chatbot. The people I know don’t. Every chatbot interaction I’ve had has been in the context of toying with a new technology. I have not adopted it in any scenario yet, and I don’t know anyone who has. So, while I’m bullish on bots, and Kezmo will serve as the foundation for the deployments of bots either the technology is not quite there yet, or otherwise

The app store user experience is a mess

Indeed, to our dismay the app store has proven to be zero traction marketing channel. The fact that the majority of mobile apps are zombies is something we’ve experienced first hand.

Today 83% of the apps in the App Store are zombies

It doesn’t seem that far ago when free apps were able to generate hundreds of downloads per day just by the mere fact that they were free, and the app store was new. This dynamic is dead. If you are publishing anything to the app store, make sure to generate traction for it independently, relying only on the app store for marketing an app is not an option anymore, no matter how much app store search optimization time you put in.

Closing thought: are we comparing apples to oranges?

We can all agree the app store user experience is a mess, and both Apple and Google need to make changes asap to inject some life back in the app ecosystem. On the other hand chatbots seem like a promising investment despite imho the lack of true traction yet. To what extent are these two phenomenons related? Are we comparing apple to oranges?

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