In a new white paper, Juniper Research analyst Windsor Holden predicts that yearly mobile app downloads will top 25 billion, as both manufacturers and carriers around the world continue to promote apps and app stores. This compares to 2.6 billion downloads in 2009, so Juniper is basically predicting that this market will increase tenfold in the next five years.
Pointing out that the freemium model will most likely be the preferred model for app developers, and that app stores other than Apple’s App Store and the Android Market will help to push mobile app downloads, including for example “Mobile Market” from China Unicom, “Airtel App Central” from Bharti and the “Apps & Games Shop” from Vodafone 360.
Cautioning against looking solely at Apple as the model, the report’s author was quoted as saying:
“Apple has been able to achieve several billion downloads from a comparatively small handset base because customers are buying the iPhone for the apps. That’s not been the case with other handsets. So even if you have a subscriber base of tens of millions, your addressable market is a fraction of that – and spread across a variety of operating systems and handsets.”
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