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According to ABI Research, the world’s smartphone subscribers will download about 36 billion apps in 2012, resulting in almost 37 native apps through the year for the average smartphone subscriber. That’s nearly 6% increase to the 35 apps downloaded per smartphone subscriber on average in 2011.
However, the average download count will not increase substantially over the coming years and will rather start modestly decreasing. In fact, the next waves of smartphone subscribers in the more mature app markets will be downloading quite notably fewer apps than the first one-third of the mobile consumers who bought smartphones.
The major factor contributing to the downward trend in average app downloads is the evolution of mobile web. For instance, The Financial Times decided to pull the plug on its iOS app and bet instead on HTML5.
ABI’s senior analyst Aapo Markkanen argues that news and magazine apps are a segment where the momentum is likely to shift towards the web within the next two to three years. And since this type of apps already accounts for a large share of smartphone usage, it is likely to play an even bigger role in later adopters’ usage. “Changes in this segment alone will make subscribers on average download fewer native apps,” he concludes.
As usual, you can get additional information about the report from ABI Research’s website.
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
