You're right, but a lot of people do use third-party apps on their mobile phones since the official Reddit app is crap. From what I've read, third-party apps are also the only way for moderators to perform while they're away from their desktops since the official app is extremely limited in that regard.
Even on desktop, a lot users and mods use Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) [0] because the "default" Reddit is crap too, lol. I'm sure other HN users would also be using the "old" version of reddit, old.reddit.com [1] since it still performs better somehow. RES has also mentioned that it should continue working fine, but they're not entirely sure about it either. [2]
Really? Maybe I'm in an A/B test but on mobile for me every page load pops up a dialog that says "this looks better in the app" and they only load a limited number of comments and gate the rest behind the app.
Apollo was by far the best reddit browsing experience on mobile and it seems like the API price was a direct action to shut these third party experiences down knowing their experience was sub par.
Are you using old.reddit.com by chance? If so I have a sneaking suspicious that's going to go away in due time.
There's some third-party clients similar to what Twitter had this time last year, with Apollo being the most popular to the point of having its icon/screenshots in Apple's WWDC presentation last week.
I think the biggest impact, though, is some moderators rely on tools/clients to make their (voluntary) jobs easier. If those tools disappear, then a lot of these subreddits will probably shut down for lack of moderators. And I heard that /r/blind mods literally cannot use the existing Reddit site/apps.
From what I’ve read, they’ve been running an A/B test blocking the mobile web surface from working so would not be a leap to suggest they want to drop to be an app only product.
To me Reddit is a website, people keep referring to it as an app, but I have never used an app for it. It works best in the browser.