The decline of the app millionaire

phone apps
Getty Images

Smartphone apps are sucking up more of our time than ever (a 65% increase over the past two years), but we really use only a few of them. Facebook alone consumes 10% of our time, and most people don’t download even one new app in an average month, ComScore reports.

That’s bad news for aspiring app-reneurs. According to analytics firm Adjust, more than 80% of the 1.4 million apps in Apple’s (AAPL) App Store are “zombies,” meaning they can’t be found on any of the company’s thousands of top category rankings (and thus can’t easily be found by users). Most will languish in obscurity. Getting rich quick: still no app for that.

This story is from the March 1, 2015 issue of Fortune.

Subscribe to the Eye on AI newsletter to stay abreast of how AI is shaping the future of business. Sign up for free.