Noting the runaway growth of the mobile applications business (more than 300,000 mobile apps developed in just over three years), research firm IDC now estimates that global app revenues will top $35 billion by the end of 2014.
IDC also projects that over the next four years worldwide download totals will grow from 10.9 billion (in 2010) to 76.9 billion in 2014.
Observing that the expansion of the mobile applications market will continue to reach new devices like connected TVs, IDC maintains that the so-called “appification” of our world (defined as “broad categories of interactions and functions in both the physical and the digital worlds”) will continue to expand at warp speed.
According to IDC vice president of mobile and wireless research, Scott Ellison, “Mobile app developers will ‘appify’ just about every interaction you can think of in your physical and digital worlds.”
“The extension of mobile apps to every aspect of our personal and business lives will be one of the hallmarks of the new decade with enormous opportunities for virtually every business sector,” he added.
And whom will benefit most from the prevalence of mobile apps? Users, of course – most of whom now enjoy via the smartphone a broad array of apps that range in utility from a “good way to kill time” to a fantastic tool or mechanism that makes life easier or some task more expedient.
“Mobile applications have the power to change the way we live,” Ellison concludes.
And that’s exactly what they continue to do.
