Reports this morning forecast that worldwide mobile app downloads will increase more than sevenfold in the next few years, from 2009’s number of seven billion to around 50 billion by 2012.
Apps look set to get cheaper in the next few years too.
The figures come via a study carried out by Chetan Sharma Consulting for Getjar, the world’s second biggest app store. Reporting on the findings, The Guardian notes that the study forecasts that the global mobile application economy will be worth $17.5bn in 2012, more than CD sales, which it predicts will be $13.83bn.
“With the consumer appetite for mobile apps rocketing, the opportunities for developers are huge,” said the CEO and founder of GetJar, Ilja Laurs. The study says that initially the focus of making revenue from apps was based entirely on paid downloads or subscription-based models, but this is going to change. Today, advertising-based revenue accounts for about 12% of app revenue, but by 2012 this figure is expected to rise to 28%.
For some platforms such as Google’s Android, advertising revenue is predicted to be even bigger than revenues from paid downloads. One big plus coming from the report is that apps are set to get cheaper in the not too distant future as well.
Notes the Guardian, “The price of mobile applications ranges from $0.99 to $999 but the average selling price in 2009 was about $1.90, the study says. Over the next three years this is predicted to decrease by 29% and apps will get cheaper; however, advertising revenue derived from apps is likely to stay relatively flat.”
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