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Jan. 20, 2010

According to market research firm Gartner, worldwide spending on mobile apps is expected to hit $6.2 billion this year, while ad sales will hit only $600 million.

Overall, global apps store download sales hit at least $4.2 billion last year.

"Average growth in smartphone sales won't necessarily mean that mobile consumers will spend more money, but what it means is that it will probably widen the addressable market for a wireless service offering that will be advertising-funded," said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner, in a statement.

"The value chain of the application stores will evolve as rules are set and broken in an attempt to find the most profitable business model for all parties involved," added Baghdassarian.

Gartner expects 4.5 billion apps to be downloaded this year, about 79 percent of which will be free to end users.

Free downloads will account for a little over 86.7 percent of downloads in 2013. Gartner added that games continue to be the most popular mobile app, with shopping, social media, utilities and productivity tools all growing in overall. popularity.

"Application stores will be a core focus throughout this year for the mobile industry and applications themselves will help determine the winner among mobile device platforms," said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner.

"Wireless users will have a wide choice of stores and will seek the ones that make it easy for them to discover mobile apps that they are interested in and make it easy to pay for them when they have to. Mobile developers will have to consider carefully not only which platform to support the apps but also which store to promote their applications in."

Although mobile advertising currently comprises a small share of overall apps revenue, Gartner says ad-sponsored mobile applications will generate about 24.8 percent of all app store sales by 2013.

The mobile apps market is expected to grow to almost $30 billion by the end of 2013, including spending on paid-for applications and advertising-sponsored free applications.

Gartner's next mobile advertising market estimates are expected in May.

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Source: Gartner Inc.