Mobile app market set for increased growth: Gartner

Boosted by the fast development of smartphones and tablet PCs, the market for mobile device applications is set to explode, research firm Gartner Inc said Tuesday.

"By 2015, applications targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber PC projects by four to one. Smartphones and tablets will represent more than 90 percent of new growth in the world's device sales," said Brian Prentice, a research vice president for Gartner.

At least 50 percent of enterprise e-mail users will rely primarily on a tablet or other mobile device rather than a desktop by 2016, Prentice noted.

China topped the US to become the world's largest consumer of smartphones in the third quarter last year, presenting huge growth potential for application developers.

But Prentice said that currently the Chinese application industry is still weak and the market will still be dominated by foreign developers.

"We do not see a significant software application industry coming from China, especially in the export marketplace … and the business application sector," said Prentice.

Shen Sui, an industry analyst with Internet consulting firm iResearch, said that China's application industry is highly fragmented and that most domestic application developers are individuals or small firms.

However, Prentice said that the lower costs for domestic developers could offer a competitive advantage.

One challenge for big multinational IT companies is that they tend to price their products very high, and they do not have the flexibility to adjust their prices, which could mean an opportunity for Chinese developers, Prentice said.

China's mobile Internet market was worth 39.3 billion yuan (US$6.23 billion) in 2011, up 97.5 percent year-on-year, according to iResearch.

Andy Rowsell-Jones, research director for Gartner, said that annual sales of tablets will expand to 294 million by 2015. Apple's iOS operating system is expected to have a 45 percent market share by then, with Android expanding to 49 percent.

But iResearch's Shen noted that free applications still dominate the market, with fee-paying applications accounting for less than 20 percent at present.