A Market for Apps Going Mobile

Over the last few days, I've had a number of statistics related to mobile devices come across my desk. For example, a press release from Prompt Communications for asknet included a few stats on mobile growth. For example, 2010 mobile sales are expected to top $1 billion. This was after an expectation that the mobile commerce market sales would top $750 million in 2009, a 117% growth.

Of course, sales of mobile devices doesn't necessarily mean sales of applications. Of course, in the asknet survey, 55% of respondents said they actually had bought software for their smartphone, but most spent less than $50. There were, however, 12 percent that had spent between $51 and 150 for an application. 27% of those buying applications, bought business applications. 51% said they would buy more business software. Not surprising, most had bought music and said they would buy more music.

Regardless of what the press releases say and what the statistics are, it is obvious that more people are using smart phones and that the computing power of those phones is increasing. Along with the increase in power is the increase in the number of people using phones with data plans that allow them to always be connected. The release of the Android operating system and the continued development in the market by Apple are also raising the bar on what phones can do. As such, applications for phones are reaching new heights. With Windows Phone 7 System now announced too, the battle for applications on the phone is bound to heat up.

Whether you are using Objective-C and targeting the iPhone, using Java and programming for Android, or using Microsoft's technologies for Windows mobile, it does appear that the market and opportunities for making money with mobile applications is increasing. The question is, whether you will be building applications that target one or more devices and trying to cash in as well. It seems like the chances of cashing in might be greater than building a new desktop application these days!

Time will tell...



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Mobile Phone Development is a blog by a guy fairly active in this space. He tends to cover the market fairly generally in this blog, with less focus on a specific platform.

I find the release of Windows Phone 7 quite exciting. My boss bought an iPhone way back when with a view to developing something for it but never quite got around to it because the langauge and the tools were a pain after VS.NET. I own a Nokia N97 and was going to look at developing something for Symbian in Java but never quite got around to it. As an experienced .NET developer, I wouldn't be surprised if my next phone runs WinP7, assuming the platform is up to scratch, because the learning curve will be pretty flat and I already know the tools. I'm not looking at "cashing in" to begin with but if I get something interesting off the ground then things might change.