Holiday Gift Guide »

Mobile apps could generate $17 billion by 2012

By: , IntoMobile
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 12:26 PM

Those sometimes-silly little applications could lead to another boom period, as GetJar is saying the global market will grow to $17.5 billion in two years.

GetJar is the second-biggest app store in the world – behind Apple, of course – and it primarily delivers programs to a wide variety of feature phones. While smartphones get a lot of the attention in the app space, the majority of the world is still using feature phones.

“It is almost as if these phones don’t exist,” GetJar CEO Ilja Lars said. “We know smartphones are an extremely important phenomenon, but in terms of consumer mindshare and revenue share, feature phones represent 90% of the global market compared to 10% for smartphones and data cards.”

While other reports said the app space will be worth $15 billion, it’s clear that this is becoming a highly valuable market. These types of revenues are going to lead to major investments, new market leaders, uncertainty, and really cool products for us. It’s starting to look like the first web boom, and while there will be a few missteps, we should also be entering an era of innovative stuff. I can’t wait.

[Via BBC]

About The Author

Marin Perez

Marin Perez has torture tested cell phones and smartphones for industry leaders like CNET and InformationWeek. He remembers when 4G was just a screen on PowerPoint presentations and is fascinated with the amount of innovation out there. Marin has spent a lot of time with BlackBerry and Android but he finally broke down a bought an iPhone to see what all the hype's about. He also has too many tablets.