89% of App Store Downloads are "Free"

Free apps will account for 89 percent of total downloads in 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide mobile app store downloads will surpass 45.6 billion in 2012, with free downloads accounting for 40.1 billion, and paid-for downloads totaling 5 billion.

"In terms of the apps that consumers are buying, 90 percent of the paid-for downloads cost less than $3 each," says Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner. "Similar to free apps, lower-priced apps will drive the majority of downloads. Apps between 99 cents and $2.99 will account for 87.5 percent of paid-for downloads in 2012, and 96 percent by 2016." 

Gartner expects Apple's App Store to have more than 21 billion downloads in 2012, which is an increase of 74 percent over 2011 and indicates continued strong demand for mobile app content. 

"Apple's market share is the largest, considering its App Store accounts for 25 percent of available apps in all stores," said Brian Blau, research director at Gartner. Demand for apps overall will still be dominated by Apple, Google and Microsoft sites, though important third party stores will operate. 

Mobile App Store Downloads, Worldwide, 2010-2016 (Millions of Downloads)

	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Free Downloads	22,044	40,599	73,280	119,842	188,946	287,933
Paid-for Downloads	2,893	5,018	8,142	11,853	16,430	21,672
Total Downloads	24,936	45,617	81,422	131,695	205,376	309,606
Free Downloads %	88.4%	89.0%	90.0%	91.0%	92.0%	93.0%

Source: Gartner (September 2012)

"Amazon will become a powerful competitor," says Shen. "In China, there is a boom market of independent Android stores, due to the lack of presence of Google Play and 'weak' stores" operated by the mobile service providers.

As you might guess, giving away apps implies some other revenue model, and these days that largely means in-app sales of content goods or products. 

In-app purchases will drive 41 percent of the store revenue in 2016, Gartner expects.

Gartner expects the number of downloads featuring in-app purchase will increase from five percent of total downloads in 2011 to 30 percent in 2016, and its contribution to the store revenue will increase from 10 to 41 percent in the same period. 

Every Budget is Becoming an IT Budget

Twelve years ago technology spending outside of IT was 20 percent of total technology spending; it will become almost 90 percent by the end of the decade, according to Gartner. 

Much of this change is being driven by the "digitization" of companies’ revenue and their services, meaning that social, mobile, cloud and other "content," marketing, customer and partner support, plus research and developing operations have to be supported. 

To address these changes, organizations will create the role of a Chief Digital Officer as part of the business unit leadership, which will become a new seat at the executive table. Gartner predicts that by 2015, 25 percent of organizations will have a Chief Digital Officer.

381 Million Mobile Money Users in Emerging Markets by 2017

According to a new research report by Berg Insight, the number of active mobile money users in emerging markets will grow from 61 million in 2011 to 381 million by 2017, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36 percent. 

Several of the most successful mobile money services are today in use in Africa, but Asia-Pacific is expected to become the most important regional market, accounting for nearly two thirds of the active user base in 2017. 

The total value of mobile money transactions is projected to grow from US$ 44 billion in 2011 at a CAGR of 44 percent to US$ 395 billion in 2017

Sales of Low-Cost Smart Phones Will Double Every Year

The low-cost smartphone segment, defined as models with a selling price of less than $150, report. Low-cost smartphone shipments are forecast to double every year from 2010 to 2016, increasing from 4.5 to 311.0 million, NPD predicts. 

Those pricing trends are crucial for adoption of smart phone technology in emerging regions. 

About 60 percent of the demand will come from the Asia Pacific region, where a large majority of component suppliers and manufacturing factories are located—providing both time and cost savings, NPD notes. 

Android is the most popular operating system for low-cost smart phone designs, NPD says. 

                   Android-Based Low Cost Smart Phone Shipments by Region

Source: NPD DisplaySearch Smartphones: Displays, Designs and Functionality report

The penetration rate of Android-based low-cost smart phones is increasing, with NPD DisplaySearch forecasting Android share to grow from two percent of total smart phone shipments in 2012 to 29 percent in 2016. 

                                          Penetration of Low-Cost Smart Phones

13 Billion Years of Galaxy History, in 2 Minutes

NASA has created a simulation of how a spiral (disc shaped)  galaxy such as the Milky Way forms, over 13.5 billion years. It's two minutes for your inner geek. 

The simulation ran on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and required about one million CPU hours.

Cloud Computing in Europe Could Provide €250 Billion EU GDP Growth in 2020

According to a new IDC study conducted on behalf of the EU, removing barriers to adoption of cloud services would have a strong impact on adoption in the EU, increasing the value of spending on public cloud services from €35.2Bn to €77.7Bn by 2020.

According to the model developed by IDC, if the EU adopts a 'no intervention' policy towards cloud adoption, cloud could generate up to €88 billion of contribution to the EU GDP in 2020. However, if the EU follows a proactive a “policy-driven" scenario towards cloud, it would generate up to €250 billion GDP in 2020, corresponding to an increase of €162 billion over the 'no intervention' scenario. 

"We estimate that the cumulative impact for the period 2015 to 2020 will be €940 billion in the “policy-driven” scenario, compared to €357 billion in the “no intervention” one," said Giuliana Folco,  IDC research vice president, European Industry Solutions.

That might be a bit optimistic, though, as there seem to be other reasons for resistance to cloud computing. 

The fear of a US-owned cloud company turning over personal data of a European citizen to U.S. authorities, plus a less positive view of outsourcing in general, are retarding the growth of cloud computing in Europe, according to Christian Echeyne, director of IT infrastructure technologies and engineering for Orange Business Services. 

Of course, some might simply argue that U.S. cloud computing adoption also lags behind Asia-Pacific and Latin America adoption as well. 

Google Generating $8 Billion from Google Play, Implies Developers Earning $26.7 Billion

Google revealed yesterday that its mobile business is now generating revenue at a run rate of $8 billion a year. If you assume Google's share of app revenue is roughly 30 percent of gross, that implies developers collectively are earning roughly $26.7 billion in revenue. 

This is up from the US$2.5 billion figure given a year ago, but also now includes sales generated from Android’s  Google Play: store as well as mobile advertising income. 

“This time last year, I announced that our run-rate for mobile advertising hit US$2.5 billion. That seemed like a pretty big number even for Google. But now we have built up additional mobile revenue from users paying for content and apps in Google Play,” explained Google CEO Larry Page.