At barely four years old, the mobile app industry is still the Dark Continent of the Internet, with much ground uncharted and numerous companies staking their claim in the territory.
Still, there is some industry data that can be gleaned from its current state, as pointed out this week by the blog of AppsMarketing.mobi.
- The top three app markets are the iTunes App Store (571,745 apps), the Android Market (~300,000) and Nokia’s Ovi Store (~50,000).
- The most popular category is games, with 65% of smartphone users who downloaded at least one app in the last month choosing a game.
- International Data Corp. has predicted 182.7 billion apps will be downloaded by 2015, nearly a 1,600% increase from the 10.7 billion downloads in 2010.
- The average iOS user (iPhone, iPad) has downloaded a total of 75 apps.
- To free or not to free?
- Google’s Android Market offers the highest proportion of free apps, at 57% of their total selection.
- For every 1 app that was paid for, 12 freebies were downloaded.
- During the first half of this year, 65% of all revenue from the iTunes App Store’s Top 100 downloaded games shifted from premium (pay to download) to freemium (free to download, with in-game upgrades and items for sale).
- 2/3 of all purchases made in iOS and Android freemium games are consumable, meaning they are used and deplete over time, possibly to be purchased again.
