Last year, users downloaded 2.4 billion apps from mobile app stores. Market researchers at ABI believe that smartphone app downloads will continue to rise until they reach around 7 billion 2013. At that time, they predict, downloads will begin to fall off.
Senior analyst Mark Beccue says, “We see two emerging trends: first, many applications (increasingly built on web standards) will migrate from app stores to regular websites, and for some sites you won’t need an app at all. In addition, more and more popular applications will be preloaded on mobile devices. Social networking apps in particular will be pre-loaded on new products.”
ABI also predicts that Apple’s App Store will retain its leadership position over the next few years.
