How Mobile Apps Revolution Has Changed The World

POSTED BY Heather Johnson, UPDATED ON March 15th, 2023
How Mobile Apps Revolution Has Changed the World

The mobile apps revolution has literally changed the world as we know it and today mobile applications are used by people from various professions all across the globe for various different reasons. The word “app” was listed as the “Word of the Year” in 2010 by the American Dialect Society. As per the survey in the year 2012, it was seen 51.1 % of the mobile subscribers used the applications whereas 49.8 performed the browsing on their devices.

 

The Mobile Apps Revolution

Apple’s iTunes App Store is one of the most popular application stores that was opened on 10th July 2008 and has a total of 850,000 apps. To date, 50+ billion downloads of the apps have been done from the store. Amazon App store is another popular store that was opened on 22nd March 2011 and has a total of 75,000 apps and 16 million downloads have already been done.

The BlackBerry App World was opened on 1st April 2009, it has 120,000 apps and a total of 3 billion downloads have been done. Opened on 23rd October 2008, Google Play has 800,000+ Apps with 48 billion downloads. The Nokia store was opened in May 2009 and has 116.583 apps and 365 million downloads. The Microsoft Windows Phone Store has ½ million downloads and a total of 145,000 apps. The Samsung Apps Store was opened in June 2010 and has 100 million downloads and 13,000 apps.

 

The King of the World of Apps

As per the ABI Research in January 2013, Apple takes the number 1 position followed by Google and Microsoft in the 2nd and 3rd positions respectively in the list of App Stores that are ranked on the basis of the market share and the approach to monetization.

Various types of applications are available for various different purposes among which one of the most popular types is Games with 33%. Next is Widgets with 8% followed by Entertainment with 7%. Social apps take 5% whereas Lifestyle, Music, Photography, and Productivity are 4% each. Tools, Communication, and Utilities have 3% each.

In terms of the number of applications, Apple App Store has 17% of the apps related to games in its stores while Google Play has 15% of games. BlackBerry App World has 15% Books and 9% games-related apps. The Microsoft Windows Phone Store has 19% Entertainment, 15% Tools and Productivity, and 12% Games-related apps.

There are various messaging applications that are used by people all across the globe. Facebook Messenger is one of the top messaging apps that has 700 million users. WeChat has 300 million users whereas WhatsApp has 200 million users. Viber has 175 Million users followed by Line with 100 million users. Kakao Talk has 70 million users, BBM has 60 million users, iMessage has 45 million users, ChatOn has 10 million users and Skype has 10 million users.

 

The Future of Mobile Apps

There are various statistics related to global mobile app usage. In the year 2010, more than 300,000 applications were downloaded 10.9 billion times. It has been predicted by International Data Corporation that global downloads will reach 76.9 billion in the year 2014 and it will be worth US $35 billion.

As per May 2010, ABI Research, the app stores will have peak time in the year 2013 and then after that, they will decline slowly due to the migration of the subscribers to social networking apps.

Here is an infographic on the mobile apps revolution to highlight the situation thoroughly in a graphic manner:

Mobile Apps Revolution Infographic

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