Research firm Gartner has released numbers for the mobile app economy in 2013, and the numbers are looking good.
Gartner predicted that 2013 would see a total of 102 billion mobile app downloads on smartphones, with app revenues totaling $26 billion. Nearly 91 percent of the downloads will be free apps, the company said.
90 percent of app downloads would come from Apple’s App Store and Google Play. Not surprising, since between Apple’s iPhone and iPad and Android’s market share on the remaining smartphones and tablets, the two tech giants account for a similar market share and dominate the smartphone and tablet industry.
The good news about the mobile app economy comes as the tech industry goes through the throes of a once-in-a-generation shift in terms of how people use their devices. This year, smartphones outsold feature phones for the first time and tablets are predicted to overtake PC sales sometime in 2014. Google’s Android operating system has already been activated on over 1 billion devices, and Apple is getting close to that number (during its iPhone 5C/5S launch, the Cupertino firm said that over 900 million iOS devices had been activated.)
The $26 billion in app revenue isn’t just app sales; Gartner said that in-app purchases would account for 17 percent of revenues ($4 billion) and would rise over the next four years to account for almost half of the app economy. In-app advertising, meanwhile, would drive around $1.8 billion in revenue.
And the future of the app economy? Gartner says its outlook looks good for at least the foreseeable future; the company predicts that mobile app revenues would hit $76.52 billion and 268 billion downloads by 2017.
