Gartner Inc., an American information technology and research firm, forecasted free mobile app downloads to reach 239.25 billion globally by 2017 while paid-for app downloads will reach 14.78 billion.
The Stanford-based firm presented data gathered showing that the free mobile app downloads for 2012 was at 57.33 billion while it was 6.65 billion for the paid-for apps.
"Free apps currently account for about 60 per cent and 80 per cent of the total available apps in Apple's App Store and Google Play, respectively," said Gartner Research Director Brian Blau.
The research firm anticipates a total of 92.88 billion download of free mobile apps in 2013, 127.70 billion by 2014, 167.10 billion by 2015, and 211.31 billion by 2016. The growth is seven percent per year.
The paid-for app downloads is expected to have an eight percent growth per year. Gartner projected it to be 9.19 billion by 2013, 11.11 billion by 2014, and may reach 12.57 billion by 2015.
Revenue is also expected to increase by 44 percent in 2013 compared to 2012’s earnings.
"Mobile apps stores will see annual downloads reach 102 billion in 2013, up from 64 billion in 2012. Total revenue in 2013 will reach USD 26 billion, up from USD 18 billion in 2012," Gartner said.
According to the Mobile Statistics website date for 2013, the Apple App Store currently has 900,000 apps available for download for iOS devices. The Android OS, on the other hand, which is being used by several mobile manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony, etc., has roughly about 800,000 apps available in its Google Play Store. BlackBerry running solely on its BlackBerry devices and the Windows Phone (available on Nokia and a few HTC) are both below 100,000. In terms of downloads, Android and Apple have a close fight with 50 billion and 48 billion since 2010 respectively.
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