A new generation of AI development platforms has made it possible to build and ship a mobile app in days, sometimes hours. New app releases are booming. Yet usage is not following. Financial Times data from June 2026 shows that while the number of new apps is surging, the number of apps people actually adopt and keep using has barely moved.
For Ivo Weevers, this gap comes as no surprise. A leader in the technology industry for more than 20 years, Weevers has shipped products used by millions - he co-founded Albert, a finance app for the self-employed that became the UK’s highest-rated app in its category and sold it to banking giant Santander within four years, with a team of just seven people.
“AI has clearly made it easier to ship prototypes, improvements and features. Today, my teams, which build AI-powered education apps for schools worldwide, use it every day and it’s brilliant,” says Weevers. “But building an app and creating a successful app - with continued engagement, habits, trust and a sustainable business model - are two very different things.”
His view is that while the best apps feel simple to use, what it takes to run them is anything but. A successful app is a full business. Behind the screen sit customer support, legal requirements, data analysis and dozens of systems that all have to keep working together. And building the app is only half the job. The bigger challenge is getting noticed and chosen: standing out among millions of other apps, convincing people to download it, getting the price right, and turning first-time users into loyal customers. That takes serious marketing and it never stops. The best teams keep listening to their users, fixing problems and improving the app, week after week, year after year.
“The idea that enduring apps can be created with a handful of prompts tends to be held by people who have never spent years operating a product after launch,” he says. “The hard part isn’t shipping version 1. The hard part is earning a place on someone’s home screen for years.”
This distinction matters because AI is dramatically reducing the cost of creating software - but it has not reduced the difficulty of creating products people care about. According to Weevers, what separates the winners is not access to better tools, but a fundamentally different way of thinking.
In his Amazon #1 bestselling book, Pocket Winners: How to Develop the Winning Mindset to Create Standout Mobile Apps, Weevers reveals how the most successful app teams think differently through what he calls the “Mobile Mindset”: a framework of practical behaviours spanning five crucial levels - seeing differently, proving promises fast, obsessing about the funnel, treasuring each detail, and navigating a non-mobile organisation.
“AI is a phenomenal accelerator, and every serious team should be using it,” says Weevers. “But success in mobile has never come from a tool. It comes from a mindset - the discipline to see what users really need, prove it fast, and keep improving long after launch. That was true before AI, and it is even more true now.”
Pocket Winners: How to Develop the Winning Mindset to Create Standout Mobile Apps is out now and available to order on Amazon.
About Ivo Weevers
Ivo Weevers is a mobile and AI product leader, exited founder, bestselling author and early-stage investor. Over more than 20 years he has shipped mobile products used by millions of people. He co-founded Albert, a finance app for the self-employed that became the UK’s highest-rated app in its category, and sold it to Santander within four years with a team of just seven. His career spans product and design leadership across mobile’s defining products: the first popular mobile apps for UK banks RBS and NatWest, Head of Design at Ubuntu (Canonical), fintech scale-up Ebury, and Chief Product Officer within Santander’s digital unit. Today he leads the teams building the first AI-powered education apps for schools worldwide, and is a partner at Amsterdam-based fund Great Stuff Ventures, which has invested in more than 40 early-stage companies across fintech, medtech, energytech and AI. His book Pocket Winners is an Amazon #1 Best Seller.
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