By 2013, more than $4 billion will be spent on smartphone applications, according to a new study by the Yankee Group ... and the estimate is said to be conservative. With the average owner of one of these devices downloading around 20 applications a year, it's obvious that this market is getting ready to pop. Currently, only $343 million is spent in this space.
An increase in the number of smartphone applications available -- for Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone, Reasearch in Motion's (NASDAQ: RIMM) Blackberry, and Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android -- and rising prices for these applications will push the total size of this market higher.
Among the companies watching this market develop is the newspaper industry. Of a group of publishers surveyed by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, half of publishers see smartphones as becoming crucial to content distribution over the next three years. Only 42% have this view of e-book readers, such as Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Kindle. Of course, 42% isn't far below 50%, which means there is little difference between the perceptions of the two channels.
More alarming, though, is that at least half don't see the potential of these distribution channels. So, as the print world lost the share of the internet that it could have had, it's getting ready to commit to at least as substantial a loss of the mobile market.
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