ABI Research expects application downloads to reach five billion by 2014, an increase from an estimated 2.3 billion applications downloaded this year. As expected, the rise will come from smartphone users, and already this year we saw the smartphone adoption growing 20%. Another factor for the rise in app downloads is the proliferation of application stores.
ABI continues saying that the big beneficiary of this trend will be Android, which will see its market share of total application downloads increase from 11% in 2009 to 23% in 2014.
However, the research company also said it is expected to see revenues from mobile app sales decline by 2013, as competition will lead to downward pressure on prices, whereas some must-have apps will begin to face competition from free or ad-supported substitutes. Google Maps Navigation is pointed as a prime example.
More details about ABI’s “Mobile Application Downloads, Revenue and Traffic” is available from here.