Mobile ‘apps’ a $17.5 bln market by 2012: study
SAN FRANCISCO — A study released on Wednesday indicated that the market for mobile device software programs should rocket to 17.5 billion dollars (US) within three years. — Downloads of mobile applications to handsets will leap from slightly …
Context & Ripple Effects
The $17.5 billion-by-2012 projection comes from GetJar — an independent app store that is simultaneously forecaster and beneficiary — and TechCrunch's pickup sharpened the framing: the same data was presented as app sales on track to overtake CD sales by 2012, casting mobile software as a rival for recorded-media spending rather than a handset accessory.
AFP's wire version carries the core numbers — downloads leaping from a far smaller base within three years — and lands at a moment when the size of the paid-app pool is precisely the question every storefront is competing to answer, which makes the study's provenance part of the story.
First-order effects
- App developers get a headline number to plan against: a projected $17.5 billion paid-download market by 2012 turns app distribution into a primary business line rather than an experiment bolted onto handsets.
- GetJar gains immediately — a store-run forecast that doubles as marketing positions its open catalog as the place that volume will land, ahead of rivals' own projections.
Second-order effects
- Recorded-music retail, implicitly the benchmark in GetJar's overtake-CDs claim, now faces app purchases competing directly for the same discretionary dollar, pressuring pricing and bundling across both categories.
- Rival storefronts and handset makers are pushed to publish their own forecasts and developer-payout terms, turning analyst-style projections into competitive ammunition and shifting leverage toward whichever store controls discovery.
Third-order effects
- If store-supplied forecasts keep setting market expectations, independent measurement of the app economy becomes contested ground — whoever counts the downloads shapes the narrative developers and investors act on.
- App stores consolidate into the gatekeeping layer of mobile computing, controlling which software reaches users and on what revenue split — a position whose terms are set to be fought over as the market scales.
The trend: Mobile software distribution is moving from carrier-controlled channels and physical media to open app stores, with the stores themselves increasingly supplying the growth forecasts that define the market.