The number of
smartphone consumers using mobile applications stores is expected to hit 100 million by 2013 -- four times the number of mobile app store users that exist now. That's according to a report released Tuesday by research house In-Stat, which credited Apple's iPhone Apps store with providing a "platform for branded applications."
"With greater capabilities in both running native applications and viewing real Internet websites, smartphone have increased usage and user expectations for mobile content," wrote In-Stat principal analyst David Chamberlain in a research note. "Along with the expanding handset base, users are downloading more applications. Reach for marketing applications is growing rapidly and those applications can provide prolonged engagement with the user and keep the advertiser's brand in focus."
Among other data points In-Stat provides in its report The Apps Store Is Born: Smartphones Enable New Marketing and Advertising Opportunities Worldwide, researchers suggested smartphones with a "strong app store orientation" will make up 30 percent of the global smartphone market by 2013.
In-Stat said iPhone users are "by far the most active apps store users" and significantly outpace users of Blackberry, Palm OS or Windows Mobile phones.
Plenty of other smartphone players have recently jumped on the app store bandwagon, however. Google opened its Android app store, and Research in Motion will soon unveil Blackberry App World . Microsoft has has also issued the call for mobile application developers.
Apple last week introduced its new iPhone OS 3.0, which includes more than 1,000 new APIs developers can use to make new applications available through the App Store.
There's been buzz throughout the month that Apple's App Store, which now offers more than 25,000 downloadable applications, could be a $1 billion business by the end of the year.
