How much money have you spent on mobile apps? Whether you are sticking to the freebies or shelling out money every month for the newest, hottest paid app, you can expect the market to heat up in 2011 as developers catch on to the money-making opportunities like never before.
Indeed, worldwide mobile app-store downloads should reach 17.7 billion in 2011, a 117 percent increase from 2010, according to Gartner. And app-store revenue is set to surpass $15.1 billion in 2011, both from end users buying applications and applications themselves generating advertising revenue for developers. That’s a 190 percent increase.
Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner, doesn’t think apps are a passing fad. She sees a sizable opportunity for app stores in the future — with a “but.”
“However, applications will have to grow up and deliver a superior experience to the one that a web-based app will be able to deliver,” Baghdassarian said. “Native apps will survive the web enhancements only when they will provide a more personal and richer experience to the ‘vanilla’ experience that a web-based app will deliver.”
Free Downloads Still Rule
The hype around app stores in 2009 continued through 2010 with alternative offerings to Apple’s App Store gaining traction. Android Market, Nokia’s Ovi Store, Research In Motion’s App World, the Microsoft Marketplace and Samsung Apps are the key competitors that saw application downloads grow in 2010.
Gartner predicts free downloads to account for 81 percent of total mobile app-store downloads in 2011. That figure has been declining since the first launches in 2008. Gartner estimates free downloads will continue to decrease in 2011, then increase again from 2012 through 2014. Users will begin paying for more applications as they perceive value in the concept of mobile applications and they become more trustful of billing mechanisms, Gartner said. App revenue growth between…