How to profit from the multibillion dollar mobile app market

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 23 September 2009 12:05

IT Industry - Strategy

Yankee Group estimates the market for mobile applications will be worth $US4.2b in the US alone by 2013, and it has some advice for developers on how to maximise their share of this revenue, becoming possibly "the next Bill Gates for smartphones."

Yankee group estimates that, in 2013 some 160m US smartphone users will, between them download some seven billion applications, saying: "Yankee Group uses just two words to describe the market to come: gold rush."

Some of Yankee's advice to developers is rather surprising. Although the Blackberry is the leading executive smartphone, Yankee's advice is for developers of consumer applications to concentrate on it, because consumer-oriented apps for the Blackberry are presently scarce.

Similarly, with the iPhone and the Android rapidly gaining acceptance in the enterprise space , at the expense of Windows Mobile devices  "those [developers] aiming at enterprises should target Apple's iPhone and Google's Android to address those relatively untapped markets.

Yankee expects paid apps to account for 25 percent of downloads by 2013 and to carry an average price of $US2.37 by that time, compared to $0.99 today 2013. It says that App store owners need to attract developers by marketing their apps and promoting the store's successes via top 25 lists, download counters and running revenue tallies.

Yankee Group director, Carl Howe, author of the recent Yankee Group reports on the smartphone app market says. "Apps have been around for years, but app stores have created mass-market products with million-dollar revenue streams attached. Every mobile software developer could be the next Bill Gates for smartphones, but only if they bet on the platforms with the right reach and fit for their application."