Mobile Apps Trends

The current upwards trends of mobile applications development and sales are depicting a sheer dynamic applications industry. This increase in activity can be attributed to the increase in the number of smart phones that are being manufactured. Such phones are capable of using most of these applications, thus creating a vast market. For instance, shipments of Windows phones, Android, Symbian, and Blackberry among others have registered a constant increase since 2008 to hitherto (research2guidance, 2012). This has imparted the same effect in the mobile applications industry whereby there is a monumental trajectory in the markets. Taking application for smart phones, the early adopters phase, increased from the normal 100 percent to a whopping 1800 percent between 2007 and 2010. Application downloads increased 17.1 fold during the same period. This indicates that the trends in the industry of mobile applications are on a trajectory, especially when considering the recent past.

As the law of demand dictates, the supply decreases with an increase in demand. However, the mobile applications industry is indicating the opposite. In other words, the manufacture of mobile phones applications is also increasing with the demand. The development services for mobile applications went as high as $ US 20.5 billion last year (research2guidance, 2012). These services are defined by the creation, management, selling, distribution, and eventual extension services that are extended to the markets. This trend in also affected by the development expenses incurred when coming up with an application. The prices for this also vary from one place to another. Developers in the United Kingdom charging up to $US 626 per day and those in India going as low as $US 138 for each day spent developing an application.

The type of applications developed and sold seemingly influences the trends in the mobile applications industry. This implies that customers’ decision to buy an application depends on the services they will get from the applications. According to research2guidance, a mobile research specialist’s website, business, and weather applications fetched the highest revenues in terms of the average pay for a mobile application downloads. For example, by August 2011, about $ US 2,500 had been generated by an application called Android market insights, which is a business application (research2guidance, 2012). Similarly, it was established that the weather category, which is the smallest, had generated the highest average revenues for each application in the android store. Therefore, there is a likelihood that the two applications are particularly useful to many, thus increasing their demand. This also means that they will sell even if their prices are a little high compared to the rest.

This customer-driven trend is also resistant to aggressive competition since an application may not be popular among some groups. For instance, research2guidance asserts that too much aggressiveness in the market reduces the potential revenues of applications. An outstanding example is that of games applications where there is an intensive competition. This has, in turn, resulted in dropped prices of such applications, thus attracting less attention compared to other applications. Therefore, it is worth stating that mobile application trends are shifting towards useful applications, such as weather and business. Still in the same line, applications that are capable of changing how things are done by benefiting the users are constantly being sold. This is the reason behind the tremendous growth in mobile health applications. According to research2guidance, healthcare organizations are using them as the tools of innovation and delivering quality healthcare products and services. Applications in this field have registered a monumental increase in the market growth by a factor of seven, clocking $US 718 million by 2011. Other indicators put the figure at $ US1.3 billion for the same year (research2guidance, 2012). In conclusion, trends in mobile phone applications are on the rise. These trends are likely to continue in the future if the rate at which smart phones are being manufactured is anything to go by.