Ted Livingston, chief executive and founder of messaging app company Kik, believes bots will shoot up in popularity because they take away all the “friction” that’s associated with branded apps.

“Consumers are tired of the app,” he told congress delegates at the Conversational Commerce keynote.

To make his point, Livingston referenced the Mobile World Congress’ very own app.  “Using the app at Congress, you have to go the app store, search for it, put in your password, download it, learn how to use it – all for a conference that I’m not going to go back to until next year.”

In contrast to this “huge friction”, in order to get the software experience to users, Livingston said bots offered a much smoother ride.

“If [Congress] had built a bot, it would only be a chat code. With one wave of your phone, with the messenger you already have, you then get the app with your messenger account and you already know how to use it because of the conversational interface,” he said

A main advantage of this approach, said Kik’s chief, was more engagement with users.

Livingston recognised, however, it was still early days for bots, but envisaged that Kik’s platform – and other messaging rivals – could enable new business models.