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Mobile app stores to see 117 percent increase in downloads
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 27 January 2011, 15:51 IST
Egham, UK: Worldwide mobile application store downloads will witness 117 percent increase reaching 17.7 billion downloads in 2011 compared to 8.2 billion downloads in 2010. The predictions from Gartner also states that by the end of 2014, over 185 billion applications will have been downloaded from mobile app stores, since the launch of the first one in July 2008.
Worldwide mobile application store revenue is projected to surpass $15.1 billion in 2011, both from end users buying applications and applications themselves generating advertising revenue for their developers. This is a 190 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $5.2 billion. The analysts said that the hype around application stores in 2009 continued through 2010 with alternative offerings to the Apple App Store gaining some traction. Android Market, Nokia's Ovi Store, Research In Motion's (RIM's) App World, Microsoft Marketplace and Samsung Apps are the key competitors that saw the number of application downloads grow in 2010. "Applications will have to grow up and deliver a superior experience. Native apps will survive the Web enhancements only when they will provide a more-personal and richer experience to the 'vanilla' experience that a Web-based app will deliver.
Free downloads are forecasted to account for 81 percent of total mobile application store downloads in 2011. This percentage has been decreasing since the first launches in 2008, and Gartner estimates free downloads will continue to decrease in 2011, but it will increase again from 2012 through 2014. Users will begin paying for more applications as they perceive values in the concept of mobile applications, and they become more trustful of billing mechanisms.
In 2010, application stores' revenue is split between the store owners (such as Apple, in the case of the App Store, or RIM, in the case of App World) and the application's developer. The average revenue share is based on a 70/30 split, with 70 percent going to the developer. By the end of 2014, advertising will be generating a little under a third of the revenue generated by application stores, up from 16 percent in 2010.
"It must be assumed that media tablets will drive more downloads from consumers, boosting the overall average downloads per device. We believe Apple's App store will remain the single best-selling store across our forecast period (through 2014), although to a lesser extent, as other stores manage to gain momentum," said Carolina Milanesi, Research Vice President at Gartner.
