The growth of mobile applications seems to have touched a new level of popularity. According to Juniper Research, it is reported that the annual number of consumer-oriented handset downloads is assumed to grow from 2.6 billion in 2009 to more than 25 billion in 2015.
As per the Mobile Apps Stores report, industry players are probably seeking to emulate Apple’s growth with the App store by introducing their own-brand storefronts like the ‘Mobile market’ from China Unicom, ‘Airtel App Central’ from Bharti and the ‘Apps and Games Shop’ from Vodafone 360. It also reveals that the growth of an app-centric environment has aided some established storefronts like GetJar, which completed 1 billion downloads earlier this month.
As report author Dr Windsor Holden, “Apple has been able to achieve several billion downloads from a comparatively small handset base because customers are buying the iPhone for the apps. That’s not been the case with other handsets. So even if you have a subscriber base of tens of millions, your addressable market is a fraction of that – and spread across a variety of operating systems and handsets.”
The Juniper report cautioned industry players planning to release app stores explaining that they need to demonstrate sufficient scale by providing unique content to encourage more application downloads. It also noted that freemium was becoming a common business model to attract maximum consumers. Publishers are increasingly proposing applications for free at point of sale and later monetize it via in-app billing of subscription-based services, updates to premium content or micropayments for basic items.
A white paper namely ‘A World of Apps’ rides users to the challenges of an app store-centric ecosystem can also be downloaded from the company’s website.