Apple Responsible For 99.4% Of All 2009 App Downloads
With the amount of webOS, Maemo, S60 and Android devices growing by the day, one would think that the amount of applications downloaded in stores from those platforms would also be rising sharply. Obviously it's not sharply enough to put a dent in Apple's domination, as new research figures from Gartner has found that in 2009, Apple had a 99.4% piece of the overall app store market.
You read that correctly. Nearly 100% of every app downloaded (free or otherwise) was downloaded from the App Store, leaving every other alternative store just 0.6% to split. With these numbers, it's easy to see why webOS and Android are having a tough time ramping up their "amount of available apps" figure. Just think--if you were a software developer, would you rather program for 99.4% of the market, or that lowly 0.6%? The amount of potential cash to be made is far greater when developing for the App Store, though we have heard that apps get lost easily in there since there are just so many options.
The report notes that Apple users downloaded around 2.5 billion apps in 2009 alone, and things don't look to be slowing down. Really, there's hardly anything else to say. It's rare that the numbers actually speak for themselves, but we're pretty sure the numbers speak for themselves. The App Store rules for now, and it'll take a miracle to knock it from its pedestal.