ABI Research predicts that the mobile app market will be worth $27 billion this year. The research firm forecasts that BlackBerry and Windows will slowly augment their app catalogue as they compete for the 3rd ecosystem, but will remain far behind Apple and Android.
Apple’s iOS will continue to rule the market, generating more than two-thirds of the revenues for smartphone and tablet apps in 2013. While Android has recently surpassed Apple in terms of total app numbers, iOS users continue to spend more on their apps and the revenue gap between the two leading OSes won’t close over the next 18 months.
While smartphone apps are making more money at the moment, tablet apps are quickly catching up and it is projected they will overtake smartphones by 2017. The inclination for tablet users to pay more for apps than their smartphones is explained with the fact that tablets have larger screens and provide better user experience for gaming and reading.
And in case you wonder, ABI considered multiple revenue sources in its analysis, including pay-per download, subscription, in-app purchase and in-app advertising.