“The battle for developers is on and supporting recurring revenue streams is essential to gaining developer support. It is for this reason that Microsoft and Research in Motion are ensuring their new platforms support in-app purchase and subscription in addition to paid downloads and advertising at launch. They continue to battle for third place as the forecast shows Apple’s and Google’s app stores dominating revenue generation for developers throughout the forecast period,” said Josh Martin, director of Apps Research, Strategy Analytics.
By 2017 the mobile app smartphone market will generate more than $35 billion revenue as compared with less than $1 billion in 2009.
The Strategy Analytics App Ecosystem Opportunities (AEO) forecast – Mobile Apps Revenue Forecast: 2008 – 2017 – predicts that the app market will be driven by more targeted advertising, growing consumer interest in virtual goods and the adoption of subscription business models.
While paid downloads accounted for nearly 70 percent of revenue in 2009, the business model will account for less than 36 percent of total revenue in 2017.
According to Strategy Analytics, advertising will grow to generate the most revenue by 2013 as companies invest more in in-app advertising, improved targeting helps maintain CPMs, and more developers rely on advertising to drive revenue.
