App stores worth £3.8 billion in 2010
Gartner believes that the quality and quantity of apps available for particular smartphone platforms will decide its success.
That's the value market watcher Gartner is placing on the mobile application store market as a whole for 2010 - despite the fact that eight out of ten applications downloaded by users of things like the Android Market or Apple's App Store are either completely free or ad-supported.
According to an article over on Softpedia, Gartner's figures predict that there will be around 8 billion individual smartphone application downloads from official sources in 2010 - rising to an impressive 21.6 billion by 2013.
To put the figures in monetary terms, the mobile application sector generated around $4.2 billion (£2.6 billion) in revenue in 2009 with Gartner's predictions expecting that to rise to $6.2 billion (£3.8 billion) in 2010 and then rocket to $29.5 billion (£18 billion) in 2013 - representing a major new sector for companies to exploit. Even developers of no-cost applications can get in on the act, with the market watcher predicting that around 25 percent of 2013's total app store revenue will be from advertising rather than direct purchases.
The application market isn't only important for making people rich, however: Gartner's research director Carolina Milanesi believes that the quality and breadth of applications available on each individual platform - including Google's Android, Apple's iPhone OS, Palm's WebOS, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile - "will help determine the winner among mobile devices platforms" far more decisively than the quality, appearance, or performance of the operating platform itself.
With Apple's iPhone continuing to dominate the smartphone sector, and interest in Google's Android soaring steadily up to meet it, it'll be interesting to see which platform gets its killer application first.
Are you a tricked-out smartphone user festooned with apps, or is your 'phone just for making calls? Have you ever spent real cash money on smartphone apps, or do you just browse to see what freebies are on offer? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyWhen you start putting astronomical valuations (and laughable 'predictions') on stuff like this, you're almost guaranteeing it's bottom will eventually fall out.
Twitter's recently valuation also comes to mind for similar reasons...
Goddam Apple and their stupid naming schemes.
if one more person comes up to me and tries to show me an app they paid £5 for that does something they will only ever use 1 time I swear...
I mean its important to have an application that tells you what not to do if a rhino is charging you or how not to get your iphone stolen down a back street, but why do people promote the **** they idiotically brought to non believers? lol...
Make calls?
Send texts?
Wake you up?
If the answer to those three is yes then you're set - forget about it.
Almost every smartphone out there already has all the applications needed
My main grip with the iPhone is the barrier to entry for developers looking to create apps for the platform.
Besides, most of the stuff on there is trash anyway. No point if boasting you have 3 million applications if 2.999999 are pants.
Unfortunately, we live in a word where a bad product marketed well will always sell much more than an excelent product marketed badly.