14 DAY TRIAL // The emergence of a wider number of mobile application stores around the world is expected to result in a greater amount of downloads and in larger spendings on mobile software solutions. According to Gartner, the total number of app downloads in 2010 is expected to top 8 billion, with eight applications out of ten said to be free. At the same time, the firm also states that customers are expected to spend US$6.2 billion on mobile applications during the ongoing year, while advertising revenue should reach $0.6 billion worldwide.
According to Gartner, the total amount of mobile application downloads all around the world should reach 21.6 billion by 2013, while the downloads of free applications should account for 87 percent of their total number during that year. During 2010, Gartner expects for the downloads of free applications to represent 82 percent of the total number of mobile applications downloads.
“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,” said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. “Games remain the No. 1 application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money.”
During 2009, the download revenues from mobile application stores topped $4.2 billion, and should reach $29.5 billion by the end of 2013. According to Gartner, the forecast takes into consideration end-user spending on paid software solutions, as well as advertising-sponsored free applications. The latter should generate around 25 percent of the total mobile application stores revenue by 2013, the firm also notes.
“Application stores will be a core focus throughout 2010 for the mobile industry and applications themselves will help determine the winner among mobile devices platforms,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. “Consumers will have a wide choice of stores and will seek the ones that make it easy for them to discover applications they are interested in and make it easy to pay for them when they have to. Developers will have to consider carefully not only which platform to support but also which store to promote their applications in.”