The amount of app downloads and revenue of application stores continues to grow. That was found by an App Interrogator research conducted by Canalys which covered over 50 different countries.
According to the study, the leading app stores have accumulated revenue of $2.2 billion. Google Play, Apple’s App Store, Microsoft’s Windows Store and BlackBerry World scored 13.4 billion from application downloads. In addition, downloads have further increased with 11% in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the last quarter of 2012. The research also discovered that the download rate of paid applications has also jumped with about 9%.
Apple’s App Store holds nearly 75% of total revenue accumulated by the four mobile application stores. However, App Store enjoyed less downloads compared to Google Play. The Android app store made up 51% of the app downloads during the first three months of the year.
The research states that Google Play and Apple’s App Store are currently the two leaders on the application market. Nevertheless, from Canalys point that Microsoft’s Windows Store and BlackBerry World should not be underrated. The Windows Store has promising perspectives since it manages to attract popular application developers, partners and titles. BlackBerry, on the other hand, offers brand new technology products and it already has the impressive 100,000 apps on BlackBerry World. That is 30,000 more compared to when the web store was first launched.
Despite that, the study shared that the two companies will need to do some more work to reach the popularity and success of App Store and Google Play. The research says that Microsoft and BlackBerry will need to increase the sales of their mobile products. In that way, they would be able to attract developers more easily. Also, the study suggests that the two technology companies should offer services and content that is more innovative and fresh.
Canalys’ research also found that the biggest app download growth was seen in emerging markets like Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia. That was due to the increasing number of people who use smartphones in these countries.
The situation looked bright in Western Europe and North America where both downloads and revenue increased during Q1 2013. In Western Europe, the number of downloaded applications jumped with 10% and the revenue – with 8%. Things were similar on the market in North America where app downloads increased with 6% and revenue was 8% higher compared to Q4 2012.
Senior Analyst of Canalys, Tim Shepherd, stated that the future of the app market will depend on the application ecosystem’s strength. That means that Apple, Google, Microsoft and BlackBerry need to try to increase the sales of their products like mobile devices and mobile operating systems. In addition, these companies need to continue to add more applications to their store catalogues.
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