Market intelligence and analysis on mobile content - Informa ...

noted that such totals do not represent the number of unique applications, however, as a greatmany titles are likely to have variants available for download within each store.Across the Apple App Store, Android <strong>Market</strong> <strong>and</strong> BlackBerry App World, a total of more than670,000 mobile applications were available at the end of 2Q11 (see fig. 20). Of these, the largestcategory was games which accounted for 16% of the total (over 104,000 apps): 62% of thesegames were published through the App Store, 35% via the Android <strong>Market</strong> <strong>and</strong> 3% through theBlackBerry App World. It is unsurprising that games should constitute the largest portion asmobile phones are a constant companion to the user <strong>and</strong> re-playable entertainment is oftensought to pass the time when travelling.Fig. 20: Share of apps by category: Apple App Store, Android <strong>Market</strong> <strong>and</strong> BlackBerry App World,2Q11What might be more surprising is the commonality of books as an application category,despite the fact that the screen of a mobile phone does not seem ideal for lengthy readingsessions. The rise of the books category to a prominent position within each of the threeapplication stores is also notable as it predates the launch of the Apple iPad, BlackBerryPlayBook <strong>and</strong> Android tablets by a considerable amount of time. But perhaps the build-up inthe sizes of each store’s book categories was in deliberate anticipation of their launch.The book category is nearly as large as that for games, accounting for 15% of applicationspublished across the three stores (just under 98,000 apps). The Apple App Store accounts forthe greatest share with 58%, followed by the Android <strong>Market</strong> at 31% <strong>and</strong> the BlackBerry AppWorld with 12% – the second-largest share of any individual category for the BlackBerry AppWorld.Unsurprisingly, the far greater size of the Apple App Store catalog means that it is responsiblefor publishing the majority of nearly every application category. This is with the exceptionof content & personalization, for which no category exists within the App Store, <strong>and</strong> (moreinterestingly) business & productivity applications. The Android <strong>Market</strong>place is the dominanthome of content <strong>and</strong> personalization apps, due to the customizable nature of the OS, <strong>and</strong> italso hosts the most business & productivity apps with a 50% share of the total.Informa viewpointDespite the high number of apps added to each application store over the 18-month period– in actual net additions <strong>and</strong> overall percentage increase – the content mix of each store hasremained remarkably constant. Consequently Informa Telecoms & Media has no reason tobelieve that this mix will change during the foreseeable future. The commonality with whichapps are created for each content category appears to have become set.Similarly, there have been no indications to date that the growth of each store in terms ofapps hosted has started to plateau. Enthusiasm in the smartphone market shows no signs ofabating <strong>and</strong> the developer communities for each store’s ecosystem are set to continue growingin the number of developers that are involved, the number of new apps submitted <strong>and</strong> theoverall size of each store’s catalog.www.informatm.com © 2011 Informa Telecoms & Media 13