Can Apple Slow Down Decline of App Store Market Share?

May 31, 2011 - PRLog -- Global Information Inc. is pleased to announce a new report, “Smartphone App Market Monitor Vol. 2 (Q1 2011)” by research2guidance.

The launching of the Apple App Store in 2008 reinvented the smartphone applications market.  “The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days,” said Steve Jobs in a July 2008 corporate press release. Even though independent stores, such as Handango and GetJar, already existed for downloading mobile applications, Apple managed to instantaneously gain 81% of the market share in its app store’s debut year. Over the last two years, however, Apple’s app platform has experienced a decline in market share by 24 percentage points.

The reasons for Apple’s market share decline to 57% in the second half of 2010 include the rise of competitive offerings from other OEMs, OS vendors and MNOs between 2009 and 2010. The number of mobile application stores spiked to 57 in 2010 representing a 217% increase from the 18 stores that existed in 2008. The Android app market has emerged as a major rival; challenging Apple’s app store dominance as it chips away at the market leader’s share.

Apple has managed to defend its position with considerable success versus software behemoths such as Microsoft and Google. The release of the iPad and iPad2 has generated a new stream of revenue for the Apple app store and iPad users are classified as “heavy downloaders”. Other app store operators have failed “to come up with a competitive app store offering which addresses the tablet app users,” notes Ralf-Gordon Jahns of research2guidance. On top of this, non-iOS based table shipment numbers still rank low which provides another edge for Apple.

Apple will need to capitalize on the mass market effect and the lock-in effect of downloaded apps if the company manages to slow down its market share loss over the next two years. If successful, it will be difficult for other players to oust Apple’s position as market leader for a good while. According to Jahns, “even though Apple’s competitors might be able to push Apple’s market share down to less than 40% by 2015 (assuming same market share drop as within the last two years), Apple will still keep the ‘heavy-downloaders’ from the early days for a long time.”

To read more about these findings, please visit: http://www.the-infoshop.com/publisher/R2G.shtml or e-mail Press@gii.co.jp

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Contact us:
Toll Free (US & CANADA): +1-866-353-3335
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