Consumers will spend $6.2 billion in 2010 in mobile application stores, which will exceed 8 billion downloads during the year. However, 82% of all downloads will be free, and that number will further grow to 87% in 2013.
Last year (2009) ended with mobile application stores around the world generating more than $4.2 billion in revenues. By the end of 2013, the figure will grow to $29.5 billion, all with the paid-for and ad-supported apps. The ad-supported segment will account for almost 25% of mobile application stores revenue by 2013.
Games remain the number one application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money.
Commenting on the research findings, Gartner’s Carolina Milanesi said: “Application stores will be a core focus throughout 2010 for the mobile industry and applications themselves will help determine the winner among mobile devices platforms. Consumers will have a wide choice of stores and will seek the ones that make it easy for them to discover applications they are interested in and make it easy to pay for them when they have to. Developers will have to consider carefully not only which platform to support but also which store to promote their applications in.”
[Via: CellularNews]