Gartner projects consumers will spend $6.2 billion on mobile apps in 2010 and generate $600 million in advertising revenues. They also say 82% of free to download, mostly powered through advertising. Gartner breaks down the smartphone user base at the end of 2009 as follows:

44.6% Symbian (Nokia)

20.8% Blackberry (Research in Motion)

17.1% iPhone (Apple)

7.9% Windows Mobile (Microsoft)

3.9% Android (Google)

1.1% Palm

App Marketplaces

Apple App Store – Currently largest by far with 3 billion downloads of 150,000 apps for the iPhone and iTouch.

Google’s Android Market – Fast growing number two now has 16,000 apps that run on any device powered by Google’s Android operating system including the Motorola Droid from Verizon Wireless and the Nexus One made by HTC for Google that uses the T-Mobile network. Since Android is free and open source it is rapidly growing in market share and every major mobile phone carrier is now offering Android based devices.

Blackberry App World – 2,000 plus apps available for the over 50 million Blackberry’s sold. Blackberry has a well established business user base and excellent security and synchronization with common corporate email systems.

Palm Software Store – Offers 5,000 apps of which 1,000 are free, that run any of 25 Palm devices that run on the webOS platform.

Nokia Ovi Store – For over 50 Nokia devices that run the Open Source Symbian operating system.

There are also third party marketplaces that offer apps for multiple platforms including Microsoft Mobile, whose own app store has been a dismal failure.

photo credit: LordFerguson