Digital Lifescapes

Mobile device users installed nearly 156 billion software applications (apps) worldwide in 2015, generating $34.2 billion in direct (non-advertising) revenue. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), these figures will grow to more than 210 billion installs and nearly $57 billion in direct revenue by 2020. However, while the market will continue to grow throughout the forecast period, IDC now expects to see slower growth in both application install volumes and direct revenue over time. This trend, which is largely driven by market maturation, will see annual install growth fall to single digits over the second half of the forecast period. Mobile application install volume will experience a five year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.3 percent. Meanwhile, direct revenue from mobile apps will also experience slower growth by the end of the forecast period, although the five year CAGR will remain in the double digits at 10.6 percent. Mark...

The digital video games industry has changed dramatically over the past decade. Historically, computers and game consoles were essentially the only devices to play games on. However, these devices have been supplemented by an array of alternative games channels in recent years. Many mobile devices -- such as smartphones and tablets -- can also be used to play various types of games, encouraging those who perhaps would not normally play games to now begin. By 2016, total revenues from mobile games will reach $28.9 billion – that's a growth of over 38 percent on the 2014 figure of $20.9 billion, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research . The study findings highlight that in an effort to maximize their apps' potential, developers are turning their focus on increasing user lifetime value. The new study found that with the domination of casual gamers playing free-to-play games, the game developer's approach has shifted from bulk acquisition of unique play...

The mobile applications economy is growing rapidly, thanks to the increased adoption of smartphones and media tablets. In 2017, it's forecast that over $75 billion will be spent on consumer mobile apps, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. This growth will be largely as a result of the in-app purchase model gaining continued traction across many markets, and the impact of new monetization models used by app developers and storefronts. Fiercely Competitive Apps Ecosystem Their market study explored how the growing app ecosystem will be strengthened as storefronts -- such as Microsoft and Amazon -- attempt to advance against the effective duopoly which Apple and Google presently have in the global marketplace. The intensifying competition will lead to the release of new features within these stores, such as better search and discovery tools, encouraging developers to write their apps for the more peripheral stores. How to Make Money with Mobile Apps ...

There's a growing market for business use of mobile application storage and download servers or alternative cloud-based offerings. ABI Research predicts the number of large companies to adopt enterprise app stores will grow at double-digit rates through 2018. Globally, large enterprise app store adoption will grow at 30.4 percent YoY with the manufacturing and trade industries commanding the largest share of app deployments. North American and Western European enterprise app store adoption will grow at 20.7 percent and 21.5 percent, respectively. However, Asia-Pacific will have the most enterprises with enterprise app stores by 2018 -- growing at 59 percent YoY. "Mobile Application Management is growing in popularity among enterprises looking to deploy flexible mobile solutions to support Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) initiatives," said Jason McNicol, senior analyst at ABI Research . ABI believes that the problem is finding a scalable solution to deploy enterpris...

Between them, Google Play and Apple’s App Store accounted for nearly 40 billion downloads in 2012. To put this accomplishment into perspective, consider that in 2009 the entire mobile app market accounted for less than 5 billion downloads. According to the findings from their latest market study, Juniper Research has forecast that in 2017 over 160 billion software apps will be downloaded globally onto consumer handsets and tablets. This sharp increase in volume -- from 80 billion in 2013 -- is a result of many consumers in developing markets upgrading from feature phones to smartphones, and a growing number of apps downloaded at no upfront cost. Games Top the List of Mobile Apps The Juniper study also found that the majority of annual application downloads will be in the games category, with at least 40 percent of downloads arising from this area. Furthermore, app stores will seek to improve stickiness by developing social features that enable game-play between application us...

The mobile applications (apps) business has reached maturity and is now growing exponentially. Apps generated impressive revenues of $12 billion in 2012, and in total 46 billion apps were downloaded in the year, taking the cumulative all-time total downloads to 83 billion. By comparison, the all-time cumulative total number of downloads stood at 37 billion at the end of 2011 -- which more than doubled by 2012, according to the latest market study by Portio Research . Moreover, during 2012, more apps were downloaded than in the previous 5 years combined. This doubling of the market is forecast to happen once again in 2013. Portio's forecasts show that 2013 will see 82 billion apps downloaded worldwide -- taking the cumulative total to 165 billion apps by the end of the year. Revenues are also forecast to grow rapidly. During 2012 app revenues reach $12 billion, in 2013 the forecast is for worldwide app revenues to reach $20.4 billion. From this doubling of the apps busine...

Revenues from mobile content -- monetized through direct billing by mobile network service providers -- is expected to rise from $2 billion last year to more than $13 billion by 2017, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. The Juniper study uncovered that network operator storefronts and portals accounted for just 6 percent of content downloads worldwide, with Google Play and the Apple App Store now comprising nearly 70 percent combined market share. In fact, the increasing popularity of of these successful Over-the-Top (OTT) mobile device application distribution platforms had led to many operators closing their own storefronts. However, Juniper also found that by offering carrier billing to third-party storefronts, mobile network operators could more than offset the continued decline in portal revenues. Moreover, storefronts which have already integrated carrier billing solutions have seen a 5-6 times increase in conversion rates compared with credit car...

Mobile app stores have become strategic assets that are the focal point of a forward-looking independent software developer ecosystem. Any company that can lead in this market has a competitive advantage that their peers will want to try and replicate. That being said, Apple recently won the ABI Research competitive assessment of mobile application storefronts, with Google finishing second and Microsoft third. In the ABI assessment, the leading app distributors were ranked by two dimensions -- implementation and innovation. In terms of implementation, Apple came first, ahead of Google and RIM. The company’s superior performance in this dimension is mainly due to its effective approach to monetization, large market share over the app industry, and the ability to achieve a large inventory of titles while maintaining a reasonably strict quality control. However, in the innovation dimension Apple is narrowly beaten by Microsoft, with Google claiming the third spot. ABI Research...

Mobile application storefronts had collectively distributed a cumulative total of 81 billion smartphone and media tablet apps -- as of the end of September 2012 -- according to the latest market study from ABI Research. Of these apps that were distributed, 89 percent were downloaded from native storefronts that come with the mobile device's operating system (OS). "The current status quo is based on storefronts that the operating system vendors provide as part of the OS experience, and there is no evidence that this would change in the future," said Aapo Markkanen, senior analyst at ABI Research . A year ago this wasn't the scenario. For example, some mobile operators could find a viable business case in the curation of Android apps, but that opportunity quickly evaporated once Google executed on its own storefront strategy. As I've stated before, the creation and expansion of an independent software application developer ecosystem is a significant strategi...

Smartphone subscribers around the world will download about 36 billion mobile phone apps in 2012, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. This activity equates to almost 37 native apps for the average smartphone subscriber through the year. The forecast reflects a nearly 6 percent global increase to the 35 apps downloaded per smartphone subscriber on average during 2011. Despite the apparent market growth since 2011, Aapo Markkanen, senior analyst at ABI Research , believes the average download count will not increase substantially over the coming years. Rather, it is more likely to start decreasing. Markkanen explains, "When forecasting on app downloads one has to make a number of assumptions on -- for instance, the device mix, developer activity, and the demographics of existing and future smartphone users." The next waves of smartphone subscribers in the more mature app markets of the United States, Western Europe, and parts of Asia will be downloa...

Mobile network service providers conceded the smartphone software application ecosystems to other companies. The resulting transfer of market influence will clearly have a lasting effect on their core business model -- as the apparent marketplace trends are now gaining momentum. ​According to the latest market study by ABI Research, mobile email and over-the-top (OTT) mobile applications (apps) -- such as Whatsapp, Viber, and iMessage -- have been altering the underlying behaviors of mobile smartphone end-users, which is impacting usage patterns. In 1Q-2012, minutes of use (Voice) per user showed the greatest declines in North America (-5.3 percent), Asia-Pacific (-0.6 percent), and Western Europe (-0.4 percent). “The only region with any meaningful positive growth is the Middle East (3.5 percent)”, said Ying Kang Tan, research associate at ABI Research . Messages Sent is also experiencing slow-downs but more so in emerging markets than developed markets. Latin America, Afri...

Smart set-top boxes that are used for streaming online video often garner less attention than other connected consumer electronics (CE) devices like TVs and game consoles. Apple has referred to its Apple TV device as a hobby -- although it apparently leads the market with around 4 million units shipped through 2011. Roku has also had some success -- passing 2.5M units in 2011. But according to the latest market study by ABI Research , the future outlook is challenging for these dedicated streaming devices, as they attempt to break out of a niche market status. TV sets, game consoles, Blu-ray players, and even mobile devices are quickly conspiring to engender a very competitive market for the digital living room. Even so, streaming digital media set-top box shipments are expected to reach as high as 57 million by 2017. "Google has a split personality in this market," according to Sam Rosen, practice director of TV & video at ABI Research. On the one hand, China,...

Mobile networking service providers are good at providing basic connectivity, but they typically fail to deliver value-added services (VAS) that their own subscribers need or want. According to the latest market study by Informa Telecoms & Media, mobile network operators will see their share of mobile content and commerce-related revenue drop from 44 percent in 2011 to 31 percent in 2016 globally. The telecom service provider market share will shrink in areas such as mobile music, mobile games, mobile TV or video, mobile messaging, location-based services and chat or social networking over the next five years. These new services will increasingly be provided over the top (OTT) by third parties that specialize in these creative offerings. According to Informa's assessment, this fall in market share would be more precipitous if it wasn't for the growing role that operators will play in mobile app payments. The app stores have unseated the operators from their former ...

Multilingual software app developers have a unique competitive advantage, as more people throughout the world adopt new mobile smartphone and media tablet devices. Locally-developed and well-translated content is the key to having mobile apps discovered by consumers. According to the latest market study by ABI Research , in Apple's Japanese App Store, 87 percent of the ten highest-ranked apps in all 21 categories were available in Japanese, as of February. Germany (83 percent) and France (82 percent) were other markets where over four-fifths of the highest-ranking apps were available in the local languages. In China, Chinese-speaking apps accounted for 76 percent of the highest-ranked apps -- with about half of them developed specifically for the local market. ABI senior analyst Aapo Markkanen said, "Our findings confirm that apps that fit into the local culture, or at least speak the audience's native language, see a measurable boost in their download rankings....

During the last decade, the smart marketers have used a variety of search engine optimization (SEO) methods to attract traffic to their web sites. As more consumers adopt smartphones, and visit app stores to find useful software applications, today marketers must learn the evolving art and science of mobile app promotion. During a recent market study ABI Research asked a key question: Can an independent developer with a nonexistent marketing budget have the largest number of top apps in Apple’s ecosystem for three months in a row? And especially when the average rating for those apps is only 2.9 out of 5? This is the case for independent application developer Michael Quach, who continuously has the highest number of titles among the top iOS apps tracked by ABI Research. In February 2012, he had an average of 40 titles per country, out of a sample size of 5,250 in each country. This sample covered the highest-ranked 250 apps in all 21 categories. What can other app developers le...

According to the latest market study by ABI Research, mobile application revenues from in-app purchases will pass pay-per-download revenues in 2012. But unless app developers get creative and Google gets in gear, the in-app purchase upside potential could be short-lived. "As a revenue model, in-app purchase is very limited today," says Mark Beccue, senior analyst, mobile services at ABI Research . The vast majority of current in-app revenue is being generated by a tiny percentage of people who are highly-committed mobile game players. ABI doesn't believe the percentage of mobile game players making in-app purchases will grow significantly, so for in-app purchase revenues to grow, mobile developers other than game developers must adopt it. To date, in-app purchase revenue growth has been hampered by Google. The company did not introduce in-app purchase to Android Market until July 2011 -- and only recently added 17 mostly-European countries in December of last ye...

Did you know that there's a mobile applications (apps) ecosystem in China? Were you aware that the total mobile application downloads for both smartphones and feature phones in China will reach 5.5 billion next year. This is an emerging market opportunity with immense potential. "As the app market in the West gets crowded, content providers and developers are eyeing new markets, such as China, which has the world's largest subscriber base," says Dan Shey, practice director at ABI Research . The ongoing expansion of China's 3G mobile service subscriptions -- which are expected to jump from 102 million in 2011 to 540 million in 2016 -- are driving app download growth. "Feature phones are an important market for app developers, maintaining a large share of the app store user base over the next few years," says ABI research analyst Fei-Feng Seet. "Regardless of device type, successful apps in the Chinese market are those with a local look an...

eMarketer reports that online retailer sales are growing fast, but the vast majority of consumer spending still takes place offline in local stores. Are retailers prepared to re-design their online presence, optimized for mobile device interaction, to capitalize on their customer's evolving shopping behavior? A large portion of those in-store sales are influenced by online research, most of which is conducted at a consumer's home. But increasingly, consumers are taking advantage of the just-in-time access to information via smartphones -- to perform more of this online research while in a store, or while in transit between stores. "While online sales are measured in billions of dollars, the store sales influenced by web research are worth trillions of dollars," said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer principal analyst. The desktop has been the prevalent place for cross-channel shoppers to do online research, but there are signs that a significant share of this activity...

My recent independent consulting efforts have been focused partly on the research and development of new and emerging media applications -- with multiplatform transmedia projects in particular. The discovery of creative new forms of visual entertainment has been a focal point of my work in this area. Moreover, experimenting with consumer electronics (CE) devices that facilitate increased consumption of online video content has changed my perspective of the future of in-home entertainment. During that exploratory process, I’ve abandoned traditional linear broadcast television -- and fully adopted on-demand service delivery offerings. Streaming online video content to my primary TV set, via a first-generation media player, helped me evolve my perspective of the upside potential for Web-based multimedia. My prior online content experience revolved around my viewing video on a much smaller notebook computer screen. Clearly, a typical PC display is not the best way to consume long-fro...

Once again, the balance of power has shifted within the mobile ecosystem marketplace. In the second quarter (Q2) of 2011, Google Android overtook Apple iOS to become the market share leader in mobile application (app) downloads. According to the latest market study by ABI Research , the market shares of Android and iOS were 44 percent and 31 percent, respectively. “Android’s open source strategy is the main factor for its success,” says Lim Shiyang, research associate at ABI Research. Being a free and open platform has expanded the Android device install base, which in turn has driven growth in the number of third-party multiplatform and mobile operator app stores. These conditions alone explain why Android is the new leader in the mobile application market. Recent quarterly shipment growth figures also explain Android’s ascent to the top app download position. Apple iPhone shipment growth in Q2 2011 slowed to 9 percent -- from 15 percent a quarter earlier. In contrast...