To bundle or unbundle mobile apps is not as simple a decision as you might think

Unbundling of apps on mobile is in fashion. Facebook Messenger (split from Facebook), Swarm (Foursquare), LinkedIn Job Search are a few examples. Here are a few reasons why unbundling an app may make sense:

- Consumers on mobile are generally looking to do a more specific and targeted task -- because they are on the go or there is less real estate on mobile -- and single-purpose apps are more suited to the use case.

- Single-purpose apps by nature are lightweight (fewer lines of code, fewer memory requirements etc.) and therefore feel and act more agile.

- Many functions when bundled in one app can make for a complicated user experience. Contrast the user experience of simply sending a message to a friend when on WhatsApp vs. Facebook (a major reason why Facebook Messenger was split as a separate app).

- Sometimes it just makes sense to have separate apps. For example, Amazon Store app and Amazon Instant Video apps have little in common (other than the fact both require an Amazon log in) to make a case for one app.

- The flagship app is too popular to risk wider experimentation and therefore it makes sense to start out as a separate low profile app (Evernote Hello, Evernote Food for example).

- Independent apps make up for a more agile process. Managing a large-scale project is complicated and fewer things a single app does, smaller the team can be therefore making the execution faster. This is especially true for larger companies (however, sometimes coordination and interworking between groups and apps respectively can actually be more inefficient).

Before you jump on the bandwagon to split apps in your company, however, it’s important to look at reasons when not to split the apps.

- Porting multiple apps to several platforms and then maintaining them can be cost intensive. Similarly, unless you are Facebook with a huge existing user base, distribution and marketing of multiple apps can pose a great challenge.

- It’s not always easy to maintain adequate level of design and branding consistency between different apps (Foursquare and Swarm maintain very different look and feel by choice rather than accident).

- It’s still not seamless to navigate between apps on mobile. For example, I still find navigating between Facebook and Messenger and Foursquare and Swarm a bit kludgy and forced.

I usually use Foursquare for discovering places and accessing my lists, and when I am at a place I often check in as well. I find it odd that anytime I need to check in, I have to switch to Swarm and even odder to switch back to Foursquare anytime I need to find more about a place. While Swarm may evolve to a more involved and popular destination app for social discovery, I think forcing a user to launch Swarm just to check-in to a place is an overkill.

- Individual pieces make sense when put together. Google Maps and Google Places used to be separate apps, but now are bundled in one app. You can find places and learn more about them all in one app. And if you are looking for directions, you just navigate using the same app.

- Just like smaller teams working on individual apps can make for more efficient execution, coordination between app teams (assuming interdependencies exist between the individual apps) can actually mean less efficient execution unless managed and planned proactively. Interfaces between components have to be defined well enough that one team can use another team’s component in their app without the need for a lot of coordination and engineering work.

- Individual apps can cannibalize each other. This is not always a bad thing especially if you can retain or grow the combined user base, but something you should be cognizant of.

Given the guidelines above, which of the following apps you think Apple should combine into one or split from the main app and why?

iTunes Store, App Store, Music, Podcasts, Radio (not a separate app, but part of Music), iTunes U, Videos, iBooks