A month and a half ago, the British consulting company Ovum revealed the results of its latest study suggesting that the global app market will be worth around $80 billion by 2020, almost 60% more than it is worth today. If you were of the thinking that this was a bold prediction, then the latest report from analyst firm App Annie, has the 2020 figure even higher. According to its latest forecast, the global app market will be worth $102 billion in 2020, which is almost twice as much as it is worth today. As the company explains, while the mature economies such as the U.S., Japan, and Europe currently account for over two-thirds of the app-related revenue on the planet, that situation is going to change in the next couple of years. By then, App Annie expects that emerging markets like India, Brazil, and Argentina will represent at least 40% of global app revenue and their growth potential is precisely the reason how App Annie’s $102 billion forecast came to be.
However, emerging markets aren’t the only reason the analyst firm believes the app market will explode in the very near future. Namely, as App Annie reveals, developers are investing more resources into universally appealing apps related to health, education, and similar purposes and as “affordable and capable smartphones” are hitting the market, this will pave the way for new audiences who can’t spend a lot on apps, but are still willing to spend something. Basically, what App Annie is saying is that smartphone apps will soon stop being convenient tools and will start becoming essential to how we all live our lives. While the figure stated is far higher than where the market currently stands, this is something that is certainly not out of the realm of possibilities and especially when taking into consideration how much the global app market has grown in the previous eight years.
It’s worth noting that this is the second time this year that App Annie forecasted the global app market doubling its value by 2020. In February, the company gave an almost identical prediction, stating that four years from now, the said market will record gross revenue in the amount of $101 billion.