Startups take note: Disruptive apps stand every chance of success

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Consumers aren't loyal to established brands in the main, and are more than happy to use so-called 'disruptive' technologies from new startups if they're convenient and save them time – and indeed plenty of time is being saved by these sort of apps and tools according to a new study.

The research, commissioned by Rackspace, found that UK consumers are using disruptive apps (on phones and computers) or online services to make an average of 2.2 hours' worth of time-savings per month.

Across the whole country, that amounts to over 51 million hours saved every month (given that 46% of respondents said they'd saved time, and applying that percentage to the total adult population).

The survey found that the main advantage of these disruptive apps and services was cited as convenience (which 51% of respondents said), and also time-savings (45%), with these concerns being way ahead of saving money (25%).

Those questioned were also asked what their priorities were when it came to choosing which apps or online tools to employ, and 66% of respondents said that ease-of-use was their top priority. 54% plumped for time-savings, and slightly more this time – 47% – went for monetary savings.

Don'ts for disruption

What were the biggest turn-offs putting folks off adopting freshly unleashed disruptive apps? The top bugbear here was security on 36%, closely followed by data privacy worries on 33%, and then the simple lack of storage space to be installing software was the third biggest concern affecting 24% of those surveyed.

So the smaller your app, and the tighter your privacy and security controls, the better.

And as for brand loyalty, 68% of respondents said they felt no loyalty to the big-name established players, when it came to switching to other more convenient apps or online services.

Darren Norfolk, UK Managing Director of Rackspace, commented: "Thanks to the sharing economy and a boom in machine learning and cloud capabilities, many industries have seen disruption in recent years – with more expected in the near future.

"With brand loyalty a thing of the past, legacy brands are even more ripe for disruption than they might believe. This means that they must build in some of the same convenience and time saving factors that startups are creating, or risk being disrupted – or even put out of business entirely."

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