These days it’s not all about just the smartphone you own by the apps and quantity of apps available to your chosen platform as mobile applications is obviously big business, and a business that is expanding at a fast rate.
According to an article over on V3 by David Neal, recent figures from Gartner, revenue from mobile apps on stores will grow by 1000% over the next 3 years and reach a staggering $58 billion, which is £36 billion.
According to the figures, Gartner says that 17.7 billion apps will be downloaded during 2011 and will grow to 185 billion come 2014. Apparently free apps count for 81% of all app store traffic, which they say that percentage has been on the decrease since back in 2008, but may rise again during 2012 and 2014.
Research director at Gartner, Stephanie Baghdassarian says…“We strongly believe there is a sizeable opportunity for application stores in the future. However, applications will have to grow up and deliver a superior experience to the one that a web-based app will be able to deliver. Native apps will survive the web enhancements only when they provide a more personal and richer experience to the ‘vanilla’ experience that a web-based app will deliver.”
Apple began the wave of apps with their App Store and several other manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon such as Android with the Android Market, Samsung with Samsung Apps, BlackBerry with BlackBerry App World and Nokia with the Ovi Store.
Gartner also believes that with the arrival of the tablet device, such as the Apple iPad, and increased interest from customers will add to app download demands.