Smartphone app market could grow over 800% by 2013
updated 09:30 am EST, Fri March 5, 2010
Mobile app revenues would top 15b in 3 years
The market for smartphone apps could grow by more than eight times in the next three years, according to a new research2guidance estimate. With about $1.94 billion in revenue last year, the market should grow over 807 percent to $15.65 billion by 2013. The prediction is based on a major push into smartphones worldwide that the analysts believe could result in 970 million smartphones being in use by the same timeframe.
The audience is already poised to triple this year to about 300 million, the researchers claimed.
App development has maintained extremely rapid growth over the past two years, particularly among the Android and iPhone platforms. The latter is now estimated to have over 150,000 apps after starting with just over 500 in July 2008. Android started later and with a much smaller pool of roughly 30 apps but has since grown to over 20,000 titles in roughly a year and a half.
BlackBerry App World, the Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace have also had a limited amount of success, although the latter may experience a "reboot" as Windows Phone 7's incompatibility will force many to rewrite apps to support the new OS.
