Gartner and the numbers
Last Thursday, Gartner introduced the report, according to which this year the number of downloads from mobile markets will amount to 102 billion. We offer you a short story about how we tried to understand what Gartner analysts meant by these figures.
To begin with, the background. This July, Google announced that 50 billion apps have been downloaded for the entire existence of Google Play (4.5 years). Earlier, in May, Apple reported that during the entire existence of the App Store (5 years), users downloaded programs 50 billion times.
And here comes a report from Gartner, which reports that in 2012 alone, the total number of downloads amounted to 63.9 billion. Moreover, 102 billion downloads are expected this year.
In general, it seemed to us at App2Top that Gartner creatively approached the issue of the design of the report and presented the total marks by year. That is, when she wrote 102 billion downloads, she did not mean 102, but 102 minus 63.9 (the total mark for all years, including 2012 figures).
With this approach, the figures turned out to be more or less realistic: 36.7 billion instead of 102 billion. But there was another problem. The growth of downloads from year to year turned out to be relatively modest. In addition, there were unexplained drops in the number of downloads.
Our readers noticed this, and in order not to sow confusion in their ranks, we decided to contact the authors of the report directly – the guys from Gartner.
As a result, Brian Blau, one of the directors of Gartner, answered us as directly as possible:
“Unfortunately your assumptions were not correct. Each of the years lists the downloads for that year”.
In other words, without options.
This answer also meant that a similar technique applied by us to revenue estimates for the year also had no right to life. In other words, the total revenue of developers for 2013 will be $26.6 billion, not $7.2 (please note, we are not talking about turnover, but about revenue).
For comparison, in June, Apple announced that it had paid over $10 billion to developers over five years. This, according to Tim Cook, is three times more than on all other mobile platforms at once.
That is, here five years, and here a year – and the amounts are comparable. However, given the rapid growth of the market, it could be assumed that at the current rate of development, this figure is quite real. This is also supported by, for example, a study by ABI Research, according to which, Android applications alone will earn $6.8 billion this year.
But, to be honest, another statement from Gartner is most unsettling. According to the company, most of the revenue this year will be paid for applications. $20 billion versus $4.5 billion for free-to-play projects. How do paid apps earn so much, considering that the tops of most of the world’s cash registers are occupied by free-to-play games?
In general, we don’t understand anything. Do you have any thoughts on this issue?
P.S. Of course, we will write to Brian again. Stay tuned for updates on App2Top.ru .
