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It doesn’t get any more savage, or any more personal, than a knock-down, drag-out fight among market research firms. Gartner, this morning, released its report for mobile apps. It claims apps generated $4.9 billion in 2009, and that 99.4% of those revenues were collected by Apple’s App Store. For the math deficient, that means all other mobile apps accounted for only $25.2 million in 2009.
Yeah, right, responded comScore. In the language of the smackdown, Alistair Hill, a comScore analyst, said, “I think somebody's missed something out on the math there...I find that hard to believe. We know iPhone users buy a lot more apps than anybody else, but that [Gartner’s finding] still doesn't work.”
Is Gartner right? Maybe. Maybe not. Gartner doesn’t survey the entire app universe, so there’s a chance some data is missing. But, Apple reported 2.5 billion app downloads in 2009. Averaging revenues on downloads, Apple would only need to generate $1.67 per app download, so Apple’s revenue could be legitimate. (Gartner, responding to a follow up from Ars Technica, defends its figures as accurate.)
Image Credit: Gartner
Comments are closed on this article
haida1068
January 19, 2010 at 3:17pm
well if they choose to pay boatloads for tiny tiny applies... thats their issues I say
nmanguy
January 19, 2010 at 2:38pm
Only Apple's able to sucker people into paying for apps. I, for example, have the policy of only using free apps on my phone.
Deanjo
January 19, 2010 at 3:41pm
Apple users believe in paying for something worthwhile where as other factions think the world owes them free stuff. Making something free is fine if you choose to do so but so is expecting to get paid for that work if that was your motive.
