Mobile apps are capturing the marketMobile World Congress in Barcelona

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the meeting place for the mobile communications industry. The most important representatives from the industry came together from 14 to 17 February. A record number of 60,000 visitors attended the congress this year. Around 1,400 exhibitors presented the key trends over 58,600 m2. Seminars also provided an opportunity to discuss current topics. The newly created exhibitor area App Planet attracted a particularly high level of interest, with around 45,000 visitors. The App Planet provided a meeting place for content providers, application developers, network operators, device manufacturers and platform developers.

When you consider that Apple only started up its App Store in summer 2008, and that more than 10 billion apps had been downloaded by January of this year, then the facts speak for themselves.

The following facts highlight the importance of the app market:

• The app market grew worldwide by 197%, representing sales of 51 billion.
• Forecasts anticipate that sales will grow from 5 billion in 2010 to 15 billion in 2011 and even 58 billion in 2014.
• Around 5 billion apps were downloaded in 2010, 81% of which were free of charge. According to estimates, this figure will reach 40 billion in 2015.
• On average, 60 apps are downloaded per terminal device.
• Mobile users use apps for an average of 667 minutes each month. More time is spent only on sending text messages – 671 minutes per month. Phone calls are becoming less important (531 minutes per month). Source: GSMA
• According to Alcatel Lucent’s Allison Cerra and Christina James in their book “The Shift”, a new application developer is born every 8 minutes. Not physically, but in virtual terms. It is estimated that 14 million application developers throughout the world are working on 6 million applications in various disciplines.

Where is this trend going, and what does this mean for telecommunications companies?
We anticipate that applications will integrate traditional telecommunications services, such as Voice, text messaging, messaging and content access rights, into the overall user experience and that they will be controlled via the user interfaces. Network services will consequently become application services, and telecommunications companies should simplify access rights to the network services and provide these to application developers. This allows telecommunications companies to provide extra added value and improve the eco system.

What are your thoughts on the importance of apps? Has your company already developed its own apps? What experience have you had in this area? We look forward to receiving your input.