According to a new research report by Berg Insight, the number of global mobile application downloads doubled during 2012 and increased from 29.5 billion in 2011 to 60.1 billion in 2012.
The mobile application downloads will continue to increase and the number of annual downloads are expected to grow to 108 billion by 2017. Berg Insight estimates that the revenues from applications, including direct revenues and in-application advertising revenues will increase from 6.4 billion in 2012 to 14.1 billion in 2017.
As per the findings of the report, Apple’s Application Store ranked first in monetisation of mobile applications. It forecasts Google Play and Windows Phone Store to be the second and the third player in the industry to monetise mobile applications. Also, in 2012, the third party application stores have pushed the Android operating system to become the leading platform in terms of application downloads. While many Western third party application stores are struggling, these stores are doing well in markets like China where Google Play hasn’t become the default on-device application store.
According to Berg Insight, monetisation is however particularly challenging in these markets, even though free to download strategies such as in-app advertising and in-application payments are promising and have been moderately successful. The free to download applications and the multiplatform support are the most popular trends in the application industry. Furthermore, publishers commonly incorporate social features, where some build their own social platforms and others use existing social networks in order to expand their application user base and increase engagement.
Johan Svanberg, senior Analyst, Berg Insight, says, “Every application can find its own way to success, but common strategies today among many of the top revenue generating app developers are to publish apps featuring a social layer on more than one platform using free to download monetisation”
He adds, “The mobile app market is highly competitive, but the economical upside can be great for the successful publishers. Like almost no other digital product, mobile apps represent a global opportunity with more or less instant worldwide distribution.”
