Mobile apps stores had collectively distributed a cumulative total of 81 billion smartphone and tablet applications as of end-September 2012, 89% of which were downloaded from native storefronts that come with the device’s operating system.
According to ABI Research’s senior analyst Aapo Markkanen, storefronts that the operating system vendors provide as part of the OS experience dominate the landscape, and there is no evidence that this would change in the future. “A year ago it still looked like that, for example, mobile operators could find a viable business case in the curation of Android apps, but that opportunity evaporated once Google got its storefront act together. Today, it makes sense for operators to distribute apps only under special circumstances, such as the ones that we’re seeing in China,” he added.
Similarly, it’s unlikely that the universal, catch-all nature of app distribution would start breaking up into smaller niche storefronts, despite the fact that there is a certain demand for specialist stores, which on their end are better off positioning themselves as recommendation channels (rather than full-blown stores) due to high operational costs. The only exceptions are B2B apps and the consumer categories that the universal storefronts don’t want to be associated with, such as the adult content stores like Mikandi…
These findings come from ABI Research’s Mobile Application Markets Research Service from where you can get additional details if you fancy so.