Gartner Says Apple Owns 99.4% of 2009 Mobile-App Sales, ComScore Contradicts

Market research firm Gartner claims that Apple totally owns the mobile-application market, with 99.4% of all sales in 2009. However, comScore analyst Alistair Hill begs to differ. During a presentation at the Mobile Games Forum in London today, he reportedly said, “I think somebody's missed something out on the maths there...”

The latest report from market research firm Gartner suggests that Apple dominates the mobile-application market by far, according to Ars Technica. The Mac maker allegedly grabbed almost every one of the 4.2 billion dollars spent on mobile apps in 2009, according to the Gartner report, which gives Apple at least 99.4 percent of all mobile apps sold for the year.

“As smartphones grow in popularity and application stores become the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads,” Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner, said in a statement. “Games remain the number one application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money.”

However, during a presentation at the Mobile Games Forum in London today, comScore analyst Alistair Hill said, “I think somebody's missed something out on the maths there... I find that hard to believe. We know iPhone users buy a lot more apps than anybody else, but that [the Gartner claims] still doesn't work,” as reported by Mobile Entertainment (mobile-ent.biz).

To reinforce his allegations, Hill dished out comScore’s own findings that 35% of US consumers were classed as 'mobile media users,' which means they've browsed the web from their phone, downloaded an app, etc. That figure is 27% in Europe, according to Hill, while Apple’s iPhone accounts for 9% of all mobile-media users in Europe. Admittedly, Apple dominated mobile-game purchases alongside Nokia, the analyst revealed. According to comScore's European research, the duo, actively embroiled in a legal dispute, have a 25% share of the market for mobile-game purchasers. Apple has around 27% in the US, comScore claims.