Can Web Apps Cash In On Apple’s $36.7B App Goldmine?

Apps, those tiny games and other bits of code on your iPhone or iPad, are adding up to serious money. After doubling to $14.1 billion this year, revenue from apps will generate more than $36.7 billion by 2015. But can web apps cash-in on this goldmine?

Whether from Apple’s App Store or Android’s Marketplace, app sales are expected to increase by 50 percent annually over the next four year, driven by a changing demand, researchers said Thursday. There is “a major shift in the mobile space, as end-user appreciation of the convenience of connected mobile apps and web services grows,” Canalys announced. Time – and location-specific apps should grow even more as consumers “take their mobile devices everywhere, opening new market opportunities,” the research firm adds

Although Apple’s App Store is raking in the majority of app revenue, researchers said developers and operators should get a part of the cash by opening their own app storms, according to Canalys. “While consumers would probably object to operators installing their app stores in place of vendor ones, there is no reason not to pre-install their app stores alongside vendor stores to compete on user experience,” analyst Tim Shepherd offers.

This is just such a non-starter. Not only does it harken back to the Dark Ages of “walled gardens” where a Verizon or AT&T sent you to their music store or their video app, but with nearly $40 billion at stake, Apple would need its head examined if it didn’t already have a proviso in its contracts banning such outright competition. But for web apps, that’s an entirely different story.

It’s very likely an ultra-popular app such as the Angry Birds franchise from Rovio could create a web app, for instance, offering another venue for its insanely-addictive games.However, only companies with deep pockets able to push-back against Apple would likely take that route. However, with multiple billions of dollars at stake, it is equally unlikely for developers not to expand the current app environment.

[via AppAdvice]

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.