US Mobile Market Watch

It is esti­mat­ed that by 2014, half of Amer­i­cans’ web brows­ing will be done on mobile devices. With the onslaught of app stores includ­ing Black­ber­ry App World, Android Mar­ket, Win­dows Mar­ket­place for Mobile, App Store for Sym­bian, Palm App Store, and, of course, Apple’s App store, it doesn’t look like the app is going any­where any­time soon.  Apple is all about mobile apps, and Google is all about Mobile web. How the sys­tem will evolve, whether apps or web will be the cho­sen mobile solu­tion is still debat­able but it is a big pos­si­bil­i­ty that both plat­forms will co-exist.

For the mobile apps space, it is pre­dict­ed that there will be con­tin­u­ous surge in the num­ber of apps avail­able, with Apple’s App Store remain­ing to be the health­i­est app econ­o­my in terms of down­loads. It will undoubt­ed­ly remain a lead­ing mar­ket­place in terms of qual­i­ty, but oth­er met­rics will have a hard time com­pet­ing with Android and its growth surges.  The iPhone will con­tin­ue to be the lead­ing app plat­form, with a data­base of over 125,000 appli­ca­tions offer­ing niche and local­ized con­tent. Oth­er plat­forms are still play­ing catch-up, with Android being the fastest gain­er among them.  It is expect­ed that with over 30,000 appli­ca­tions now avail­able, over 800 mil­lion Android appli­ca­tions will be down­loaded in 2010.  (http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/abi-research-publishes-five-year-mobile-app-forecast-predicts-apple-to-reign-supreme-8283/) — 080510

Rev­enues from mobile app sales, how­ev­er, are expect­ed to decline by 2012, as com­pe­ti­tion has led to down­ward pres­sure on appli­ca­tion prices and a greater pro­por­tion of “must-have” appli­ca­tions will begin to have free or adver­tis­ing-sup­port­ed sub­sti­tutes.  Most mobile appli­ca­tion rev­enue is made at the time of pur­chase, but it is expect­ed that in-app billing will increase in use, enabling incre­men­tal revenues.

Mean­while, the Android oper­at­ing sys­tem has shown the most sig­nif­i­cant expan­sion in mar­ket share among cur­rent sub­scribers. In the past six months alone, the Google OS grew to 27% from 6% of new­ly-acquired smart­phones (Motoro­la Droid, HTC Incred­i­ble, and HTC EVO).  In the same peri­od, the iPhone’s share of new smart­phones declined to 23% from 34%, though the iPhone still makes up 28% of U.S. smart­phone sub­scribers, com­pared to Android’s 13%.

How­ev­er, iPhone fans remain loy­al as ever. Of cur­rent iPhone own­ers, 89 % want their next mobile to also be an Apple phone, and only 6% of them are look­ing at Androids.  Apple entices cur­rent Android own­ers too, with a fifth of them con­sid­er­ing switch­ing to an iPhone, though 71% plan to stick with Android.  For Black­Ber­ry, only 42% of cur­rent own­ers plan to stick with Research In Motion’s phones, while 21% are eye­ing Android and 21%, the iPhone.

Be that as it may, the work done on a desk­top is still a lot dif­fer­ent than work done on a smart­phone. The mobile appli­ca­tion mar­ket def­i­nite­ly has tremen­dous room to grow, espe­cial­ly with the arrival of the iPad, which takes the mobile app par­a­digm and slaps it onto a big­ger, tablet device.  The enter­prise appli­ca­tion mar­ket is also anoth­er attrac­tive mobile data solu­tion that has a huge growth poten­tial. By mar­ry­ing easy-to-use prod­ucts with con­tin­u­ous inno­va­tion, low cost deliv­ery and rapid imple­men­ta­tion, ven­dors can pro­vide bet­ter cus­tomer ser­vice to the enter­prise segment.

The suc­cess of Apple’s App Store has not only estab­lished the sal­a­bil­i­ty of mobile appli­ca­tions, but has also shown that the most excel­lent appli­ca­tions offer the poten­tial to gen­er­ate large amount of rev­enues. Sev­er­al tele­com giants have thus begun pro­vid­ing ded­i­cat­ed appli­ca­tion stores for their users, so much so that more than 2 mil­lion appli­ca­tions are cur­rent­ly avail­able for com­mu­ni­ca­tions, games, mul­ti­me­dia, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, trav­el, and util­i­ty purposes.

Based on a Q1 2010 research, the top 10 con­sumer mobile appli­ca­tions in 2012 are: Mon­ey trans­fer, Loca­tion-Based Ser­vices, Mobile Search, Mobile Brows­ing, Mobile Health Mon­i­tor­ing, Mobile Pay­ment, Near Field Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices, Mobile Adver­tis­ing, Mobile Instant Mes­sag­ing and Mobile Music. (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1230413)

To effec­tive­ly mon­e­tize the sig­nif­i­cant app momen­tum, cre­ative strate­gies are need­ed to attract new con­sumers and dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­els will be required to make the ecosys­tem viable. Mobile play­ers need to enhance dis­cov­ery, improve user expe­ri­ence, drop price bar­ri­ers, increase devel­op­er rev­enue share and focus on build­ing loy­al and vibrant com­mu­ni­ties which cre­ates an audi­ence for selling/ up-sell­ing/ cross-sell­ing vir­tu­al, dig­i­tal, and even phys­i­cal goods. It should also be con­sid­ered that the cost of rolling out an app across mul­ti­ple devices around the world can increase expo­nen­tial­ly. As such, the brows­er pro­vides the prospect of being the great uni­fi­er so devel­op­ers can design once and run every­where. If an over­all strat­e­gy is exe­cut­ed well, the vol­ume of app down­loads can make up for the small­er per unit revenues.

It is esti­mat­ed that by 2014, half of Amer­i­cans’ web brows­ing will be done on mobile devices. With the onslaught of app stores includ­ing Black­ber­ry App World, Android Mar­ket, Win­dows Mar­ket­place for Mobile, App Store for Sym­bian, Palm App Store, and, of course, Apple’s App store, it doesn’t look like the app is going any­where any­time soon.  Apple is all about mobile apps, and Google is all about Mobile web. How the sys­tem will evolve, whether apps or web will be the cho­sen mobile solu­tion is still debat­able but it is a big pos­si­bil­i­ty that both plat­forms will co-exist.

For the mobile apps space, it is pre­dict­ed that there will be con­tin­u­ous surge in the num­ber of apps avail­able, with Apple’s App Store remain­ing to be the health­i­est app econ­o­my in terms of down­loads. It will undoubt­ed­ly remain a lead­ing mar­ket­place in terms of qual­i­ty, but oth­er met­rics will have a hard time com­pet­ing with Android and its growth surges.  The iPhone will con­tin­ue to be the lead­ing app plat­form, with a data­base of over 125,000 appli­ca­tions offer­ing niche and local­ized con­tent. Oth­er plat­forms are still play­ing catch-up, with Android being the fastest gain­er among them.  It is expect­ed that with over 30,000 appli­ca­tions now avail­able, over 800 mil­lion Android appli­ca­tions will be down­loaded in 2010.  (http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/abi-research-publishes-five-year-mobile-app-forecast-predicts-apple-to-reign-supreme-8283/) — 080510

Rev­enues from mobile app sales, how­ev­er, are expect­ed to decline by 2012, as com­pe­ti­tion has led to down­ward pres­sure on appli­ca­tion prices and a greater pro­por­tion of “must-have” appli­ca­tions will begin to have free or adver­tis­ing-sup­port­ed sub­sti­tutes.  Most mobile appli­ca­tion rev­enue is made at the time of pur­chase, but it is expect­ed that in-app billing will increase in use, enabling incre­men­tal revenues.

Mean­while, the Android oper­at­ing sys­tem has shown the most sig­nif­i­cant expan­sion in mar­ket share among cur­rent sub­scribers. In the past six months alone, the Google OS grew to 27% from 6% of new­ly-acquired smart­phones (Motoro­la Droid, HTC Incred­i­ble, and HTC EVO).  In the same peri­od, the iPhone’s share of new smart­phones declined to 23% from 34%, though the iPhone still makes up 28% of U.S. smart­phone sub­scribers, com­pared to Android’s 13%.

How­ev­er, iPhone fans remain loy­al as ever. Of cur­rent iPhone own­ers, 89 % want their next mobile to also be an Apple phone, and only 6% of them are look­ing at Androids.  Apple entices cur­rent Android own­ers too, with a fifth of them con­sid­er­ing switch­ing to an iPhone, though 71% plan to stick with Android.  For Black­Ber­ry, only 42% of cur­rent own­ers plan to stick with Research In Motion’s phones, while 21% are eye­ing Android and 21%, the iPhone.

Be that as it may, the work done on a desk­top is still a lot dif­fer­ent than work done on a smart­phone. The mobile appli­ca­tion mar­ket def­i­nite­ly has tremen­dous room to grow, espe­cial­ly with the arrival of the iPad, which takes the mobile app par­a­digm and slaps it onto a big­ger, tablet device.  The enter­prise appli­ca­tion mar­ket is also anoth­er attrac­tive mobile data solu­tion that has a huge growth poten­tial. By mar­ry­ing easy-to-use prod­ucts with con­tin­u­ous inno­va­tion, low cost deliv­ery and rapid imple­men­ta­tion, ven­dors can pro­vide bet­ter cus­tomer ser­vice to the enter­prise segment.

The suc­cess of Apple’s App Store has not only estab­lished the sal­a­bil­i­ty of mobile appli­ca­tions, but has also shown that the most excel­lent appli­ca­tions offer the poten­tial to gen­er­ate large amount of rev­enues. Sev­er­al tele­com giants have thus begun pro­vid­ing ded­i­cat­ed appli­ca­tion stores for their users, so much so that more than 2 mil­lion appli­ca­tions are cur­rent­ly avail­able for com­mu­ni­ca­tions, games, mul­ti­me­dia, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, trav­el, and util­i­ty purposes.

Based on a Q1 2010 research, the top 10 con­sumer mobile appli­ca­tions in 2012 are: Mon­ey trans­fer, Loca­tion-Based Ser­vices, Mobile Search, Mobile Brows­ing, Mobile Health Mon­i­tor­ing, Mobile Pay­ment, Near Field Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices, Mobile Adver­tis­ing, Mobile Instant Mes­sag­ing and Mobile Music. (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1230413)

To effec­tive­ly mon­e­tize the sig­nif­i­cant app momen­tum, cre­ative strate­gies are need­ed to attract new con­sumers and dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­els will be required to make the ecosys­tem viable. Mobile play­ers need to enhance dis­cov­ery, improve user expe­ri­ence, drop price bar­ri­ers, increase devel­op­er rev­enue share and focus on build­ing loy­al and vibrant com­mu­ni­ties which cre­ates an audi­ence for selling/ up-sell­ing/ cross-sell­ing vir­tu­al, dig­i­tal, and even phys­i­cal goods. It should also be con­sid­ered that the cost of rolling out an app across mul­ti­ple devices around the world can increase expo­nen­tial­ly. As such, the brows­er pro­vides the prospect of being the great uni­fi­er so devel­op­ers can design once and run every­where. If an over­all strat­e­gy is exe­cut­ed well, the vol­ume of app down­loads can make up for the small­er per unit revenues.