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]