Yeah, the app will help.
But the nature of the game conspires against its mass consumption. This game is not designed to satisfy the masses's bowels and guts, something that you consume and it evaporates before you turn off the video console.
This game satisfies brains: its interface is simple, it's structure is complex, and you spend (or could spend) a lot of time inside the structure of the game, instead of the actual "thing" -the BKB game of the day- happening. Brains don't need 6GB of RAM or extreme pixelation to feel pleasure; guts and bowels do.
Now, in our hypermodern times, I wouldn't expect young and middle-aged people to sign up for a game and right off the bat understand they'll need a calendar year to be elite, and actually stay. And by elite I not only mean a 15k arena with a roster that pretty much equals or surpasses your tickets earnings, with long national cup runs, but I also mean -like somenone here said somewhere- scout opponents, study players assets and skills, and actually read and understand Josef Ka's workbooks and coeffs.
So forget it, I actually think 25k users -real, long term users- is pretty much a miracle in these days.
The app will help, undoubtely, but perhaps its benefits will have to do with only having less bots (or, if you want, more "human" bots, that is dudes with just a little more activity that a true bot, but not enough activity to actually be what we would call "regular users"; they would just avoid becoming bots), but that doesn't mean the players will be more engaged with the game.
Anyway, in any case, the app should be an improvement, however you look at it.
I don't know... just some thoughts...