Apps and the app industry have seen a lot of news coverage, lately. From app developers showing 100 percent transparency about their numbers to reports being released on the Apple App economy.

But a lot of the growth this market will probably see still lies more or less far ahead of us, starting in 2010, but probably seeing strong growth until 2013 or even further. The most recent attempts in predictions where the market is going come from Gartner.

Regarding App Store revenues and downloads, Gartner foresees:

• 2010: 4.5 billion apps downloaded, for a total of $6.8 billion in revenue

• 2013: 21.6 billion apps will be downloaded, for a total of $29.5 billion in revenue

 
Download Free/Paid-ratio:

• 2010: 3.7 billion (82%) free app downloads and about 800 million (18%) paid downloads

• 2013: 18.8 billion (87%) free app downloads and 2.8 billion (13%) paid app download

 
Just by looking at these numbers, one would think that free is the way to go. And maybe that is so. The question, then, remains where all the revenue will come from. Gartner splits its revenue predictions between end-user spending and advertising revenue as follows:

• 2010:  about $6.2 (91%) billion in end-user spending and 600 million (9%) in advertising revenue

• 2013: about $23 billion (78%) in end-user spending and 6.5 (22%) billion in advertising revenue

 
First of all, these numbers imply that in-app advertising (as part of mobile advertising) is pretty big business.  The fact that many big players in the mobile space are positioning themselves to take a piece of that market right now (Google/Abmob, Apple/Quattro and Opera/AdMarvel) further substantiates this.

It also means that for any app-developer and mobile publisher, there is a chance to create a profitable business out of advertising revenues. This will probably work better for some then for others, but, in our opinion, it is a pretty save bet that mobile advertising is here to stay.

Furthermore, although Gartner does not further go into detail about “end-user spending”, it is clear that up-sale (full versions, extra levels, virtual goods etc.) will make up a large part of end-user spending. So again, for many app-developers (especially in gaming) this may be the way to go.

And of course, for “some”, simply selling the app is an option as well.

As an opinion, a market seeing such a strong growth within just a few years will probably look completely different from what it is looking like right now. New means of increasing end-user spending will pop up, supporting industries and sectors (payments, for example) will pop-up. Furthermore App Store themselves will evolve as competition between them increases (more openness might be a consequence of this).

As a bottom line, the study (even if far off) implies something we believe is very true: apps in general are big business.

And we are glad to be part of it.

Well, it is actually called the “Nexus One”, but it is definitely THE Google Phone. Sure enough it looks like a hot phone, though it probably will not be an iPhone killer. As mentioned before, we think that only the sum of Android devices will be able to make Android a competitive OS – and there will be a lot of them coming out in 2010. Anyway, as far as we can tell, these are some of the first details of the Nexus One:

• It’s an HTC (HTC Passion)

• Running on Android 2.0.1 with new 3D features to the app tray

• More home screens

• Grid icon that, when pressed, previews all the homescreen pages

• US-Operator: T-Mobile

• Wifi

• It comes loaded with Google-owned programs – among them maps and the new Google Goggles

 
Find more infos and pics on it over at engadget. It will be interesting to see how this plays out for Google. Maybe in a few years we’ll have it loaded up with a portfolio of 20 or more Google products – try to compete with that. Again, it looks like a really cool phone, we’ll update this post if we get our hands on some more details.

It’s been a busy week for us here at apprupt, not only because we went to LeWeb but also because, besides working on apprupt performance analytics, we are also on our way to announce a new product before Christmas. We are very excited about this one, so please stay tuned!

Apart from apprupt, here’s what the iPhone world has been through this last week:

• We’ll let Techrcunch do the wording on this one: “App Store Apps Finally Get Prettier Pages” – Indeed!
• Apple introduces Rewind 2009, for the best apps of 2009 – are your favorites among them?
• It has really been an “Apple-intense” week, it seems. Besides “Rewind” and the new App Store layout, they also pulled more than one thousand apps from the App Store for review fakes. They all came from the same developer.
• Not to forget, Apple countersued Nokia over a few patents (actually 13) while in China iPhone sales hit 100,000 – this really was a busy week for them
• Moving away from Apple and even the iPhone, this article refers to a study that claims that in 2010, more than 50 Android phones will be shipped – that’s an impressive amount of different phone models. The downside is, of course, the good old device-fragmentation.
• Calling it a “weird little slice of research” probably sums it up best, but we still would not want you to miss this study: “iPhone users suffering from ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, analyst firm reckons”.

 
Since this week was full of notable news, we probably have missed a few ones – forgive us and have a great weekend!

The IDC has released its „Top 10 Predictions“ for 2010 and there are some interesting notes regarding mobile in it. It also shares a lot of insights concerning the IT-Industry and what we are to expect from 2010 with regard to developments in the telecommunications sector. For mobile related topics, you should go and have a read through numbers 5 and 7.

Here’s a short summary of what we found interesting in it:

• The IDC predicts that in 2010, more than 1 billion mobile devices will be accessing the internet, compared to 1.3 billion PCs, which basically means mobile is growing 2.5 times faster than the stationary internet
• We will have at least 300.000 iPhone apps by the end of 2010. A lot of them will come from Global 2000 businesses and consumer brands. An interesting implication for who the players on these and other platforms will be
• Android is coming up strong…kind of: 50,000- 75,000 apps for Android by end of 2010. Quite a number.
• The “iPad” will arrive! Finally, an Apple tablet. The size will be rather like “an oversized iPod Touch than a downsized Mac”, but still, the potential here is huge.
• Over 200 million smartphones (or devices with the ability to run third-party applications) will be shipped in 2010. That is some market share growth and it likely will not stop. While it will be at 16% in 2010, until 2012 the IDC estimates it will reach 20%.
• Prices for smartphones will continue to drop: “look for more sub-$150 smartphone to come on the scene in 2010, accelerating the market”.

 
So there you have it: mobile is here and we are in the middle of a lot of changes and developments. Exciting!

An exciting week has passed and Christmas is coming closer and closer. This week was interesting and next week will be even more eventful (at least we hope so) with apprupt at LeWeb in Paris. Want to meet and chat about the iPhone app universe? Drop us a line, please.

Anyways, here is what you might or might not have missed these last 7 days.

• Dutch eBuddy has launched a premium iPhone app – not the cheapest, so it will be interesting how this plays out for them
• In the U.S., mobile titles now make up 3 percent of overall gaming spending – this number is sure to grow even more in the future
• App Store traffic massively increased over Thanksgiving week(end) – holidays in general appear to be a great chance for you to push your app sales. Here’s another good example.
• Gizmodo has the best iPhone apps of the week for you
• Not directly iPhone related: Apple has acquired LaLa, rumors are the reason was LaLa’s engineering talent.
• And if you happen to be at or somewhere near the University of Michigan on the 9th of december, don’t miss the iPhone Orchestra live-performance

 
Have a great weekend!

How do you go about your business as a developer? Do you consider it a hobby or a profession? Do you do it just for the enjoyment you get out of it or because you are trying to make a living from it?

For many of you, the truth is probably somewhere in between. If you still have a “normal” day job, you consider it a hobby with the potential of earning some extra income, and developing something that people buy and use is rewarding in many ways, of course. Some of you may aim to become a full time iPhone app developer in the future but are not ready to take that step just yet. Of course, there are the pros amongst app developers that are either small (one or a few devs) or large companies and are all about growing their core business metrics.
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It’s been an amazing week for apprupt, as we received some great coverage by TheNextWeb, ReadWriteWeb and the iphoneclub. Also, we have been invited to the iPhone Tech Talk in Hamburg – looking forward to see you all there!

Ap(p)art from that, these are other news that seemed important to us this last week:

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Today is an important day for the mobile industry, especially for Apple and the iPhone. The iPhone has hit China – you can go and check out their App Store on iTunes already. This is very early days regarding the market (Mobilcrunch is unsure if anyone cares at all) as well as the device itself (its missing WiFi), but still there is reason to be excited.

At this point, there are about 710 million overall cellular subscribers in China, so even if just a fraction of them goes and buys an iPhone, it means a substantial increase in potential users to reach with your app. It is exciting to see how quickly a single iPhone developer can go international through the App Store. However, there are still many questions to be answered in this regard. Internationalization (language and, if possible, product features) and pricing are, among many others, challenges that a developer will certainly face. The same holds true for marketing your app in different nations.

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The news spread fairly quickly through the techblogs yesterday –100,000 apps have now been approved by Apple. Although this hasn’t been formally announced and nobody is really sure why approved is not the same as available (see Mobilecrunch), 100,000 apps is a pretty impressive number. Even more so considering the momentum behind this development – roughly a month ago 85,000 available apps were officially announced. Of course, everybody is wondering where this will lead to in the future – next month, next year, three or five years from now?

It is as interesting thought that app development seems to be becoming more attractive and less attractive at the same time, these days. While the number of app downloads is speeding up, new potential revenue streams are opening up to developers and iPhone market share (as well as smartphone market share overall) is driving higher and higher (we wonder what is going to happen once operator exclusivity ends, if it does), it is becoming increasingly difficult for an app to get the users attention and for a developer to make a profitable business out of developing apps.

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What were your top news this week? No doubt, it has been an exciting one – (not only) because we launched our performance analytics for iPhone app marketing.

The impact of in-app purchase for free apps was widely discussed, numbers (or opinions?) on the future of mobile at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco were revealed and… well… Apple was sued – by Nokia.

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