Technology analysts Gartner forecasts in a recent report, smartphone consumers will spend $6.2 billion on mobile apps in 2010. It remains unclear whether those sales results are bringing profits to the developers of mobile applications.
In 2009, smartphone users spent a staggering £2.5 billion. Gartner reckons that revenue from the app market will hit a mind boggling $29 billion (or £18 billion) in 2013 as the number of smartphones rises significantly and users become more accustomed with mobile shopping.
Market researcher Gartner believes application downloads will reach and exceed more than 21.6 billion downloads by the year 2013. The number of free downloads will grow too, with around 87 percent all mobile applications expected to be available to mobile customers for free.
Users of high-end smartphones, such as Cupertino-based Apple’s iPhone – tend to be early adopters of new mobile applications and “more trustful of billing mechanisms, so they will pay for applications that can meet their needs,” Gartner said.
Apple has over 150,000 apps available, and claims to receive more than 10,000 new app submissions each week. The Apple App Store has already surpassed the three billion served mark, and estimates project that it will have more than 300,000 apps by the end of 2010.
Stephanie Baghdassarian, a research director at Gartner, said: “As smartphones grow in popularity and applications stores become the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads.