Everyone and their mama are using apps these days, and we’re everything but surprised to learn there’s money to be made in this market. According to Juniper Research, we’re talking about some serious cash, with annual revenues from consumer mobile applications set to approach $52 billion by 2016.
Juniper’s report found that the introduction of operator billing across storefronts such as the Android Market and Ovi Store had led to a dramatic rise in revenues. Likewise, the mass deployment of in-app billing options meant that, for many storefronts, post-download revenues had surpassed those of PPD (Pay-Per-Download).
When it comes to tablets, at the moment they account for just 7% of global app revenues, but this market rise to 25% by 2016.
As for HTML5 and its prospects, Juniper believes it [HTML5] has a bright future with content publishers being able to offer content on-site rather than be reliant on storefront distribution.
Finally, the research company says that more than 31 billion apps were downloaded to mobile devices in 2011.