In absolute terms, though, it’s an average of 1 paid app per month on Android, 2.6 paid apps on iPhone and 2.0 on iPod Touch. Broken down into those who “regularly” download paid apps, they tend to download 5 paid apps per month, spending $9.

Another interesting observation from the report is that iPod Touch users download an average total of 18 apps per month – whereas iPhone users grab 10 each month. Source

The bottom line: Apple’s App Store remains the gold standard, demonstrating that consumers will download – and pay for — apps when it’s easy to browse and simple to install. At this point, most of the other app stores out there are poor imitators that don’t pay enough attention to the usability aspects of their offerings and how they integrate into the installation process of compatible devices. Meanwhile, iPhone users are dropping some decent money on paid apps, and creating advertising opportunities with free ones.

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MOBILE NET ADSPEND TO QUADRUPLE TO $2 BILLION BY 2014, according to Juniper Research. The firm says that mobile internet ad spending worldwide will approach $500 million this year, and almost reach $2 billion by 2014.

This doesn’t even include SMS advertising, which Juniper says will be overtaken by mobile Internet ad spending this year. Overall, total mobile ad spending will hit $1.4 billion this year, and $6 billion in 2014. Source

The bottom line: Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen a lot of predictions like this, highlighting the expected growth in the mobile advertising market. Perhaps the most important thing to takeaway is that these predictions signal the high interest in mobile advertising – but to hit these lofty targets, the entire ecosystem will have to work to deliver the right solutions for brands and consumers.

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THE U.S. AD MARKET WILL FALL BY $1.6 BILLION THIS YEAR, says the Yankee Group in a new report. Spending on TV advertising will fall by $2 billion alone, the firm says, as budgets shrink and consumers shift to the I nternet on both PC and mobile. Another key factor the report cites is the booming amount of inventory available on these platforms, which it says put constant downward pressure on prices. Source

The bottom line: Like the previous point, there have been several of these reports lately, showing a significant drop in ad spending, but they typically show mobile as one bright spot. Again, the opportunity is there for mobile advertising to grow and take dollars away from other platforms – but only if the ecosystem can deliver the right opportunities.

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HARDLY ANYBODY’S WATCHING MOBILE TV, according to a new report from In-Stat (that shouldn’t really surprise anybody in mobile). Despite mobile TV’s failure to live up to the hype that’s surrounded it for several years, the firm says that 54 million people will watch analog free-to-air TV on their mobile this year, reaching 300 million in 2013. That’s an important distinction: in many developed markets, analog TV isn’t available on mobiles, or it’s somewhere in the process of being switched off in favor of digital terrestrial broadcasts. This means that growth will come largely in developing markets.

The report, it should be mentioned, was conducted on behalf of a mobile TV chip company and contains many of the type of stats that other reports about mobile TV have mentioned: those who use it tend to use it several times a week, and spend a decent amount of time watching. But the issue remains that there simply aren’t very many people at all using mobile TV. Source

The bottom line: The report’s author says that free-to-air programming supported by advertising would boost the mobile TV market. That might be true, but the lack of uptake seems to be largely built on a real lack of interest for mobile TV among consumers. Furthermore, if mobile TV accesses freely available signals, cutting the operators out of the picture, they’re unlikely to want to subsidize handsets that would support it.

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M-COMMERCE IS MOVING SLOWLY, at least in the U.S., says a new report from eMarketer. One survey it cites says retailers say budget constraints are the biggest factor keeping them from expanding their efforts, with consumer apathy apparently not even included in the survey. Another poll in the report says that more than half of U.S. consumers would be willing to buy pizza or movie/event tickets by mobile, with just 34 percent saying they’d buy games and just 24 percent saying they’d purchase mobile video/TV content.

The report talks about one more survey, which says that the most popular form of purchase via mobile among US m-commerce users is, as you’d expect, mobile content. Next, is consumer electronics, which it says has been bought by half the people who have used m-commerce. A small sample size (just 137) could help explain that figure. Source

The bottom line: Perhaps the biggest factor holding back m-commerce is a lack of real demand. For many types of goods, shopping on mobile isn’t a great experience. But for other kinds of products – in particular, services that are consumed on the go like events or travel – some market may emerge.

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OPERA MINI SEES 25 MILLION DOWNLOADS on GetJar alone, the site says. GetJar says Opera Mini is the most downloaded mobile app of all time, and that it alone has served up 7.5 million downloads of the latest version of the app since the beginning of the year. Source

The bottom line: Two main takeaways here: Opera Mini, as most readers probably already know, is a hugely popular app across multiple platforms and app stores. Second, the smartphone app stores aren’t the only places sending mobile users lots of downloads.

The bottom line: While flat-rate data plans have become more pervasive, and mobile data use has increased, cost still remains a very sticky subject, particularly for content not covered under unlimited data plans. This is a huge issue for operators and content providers looking to increase uptake of mobile content, but the implication is pretty clear: consumers don’t have good pricing information, and they’re hesitant to shell out without it.

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THERE’S A MIDDLE CLASS OF IPHONE APP DEVELOPERS, says mobile apps analytics company Flurry, with them bigger than independent developers, but much smaller than the traditional mobile powerhouses. The company studied the distribution of the most popular games on US carrier decks and in the Apple App Store, and found that the iPhone environment wasn’t dominated by the same big names (EA, Gameloft, Namco, etc.), but rather by smaller, newer developers.

Flurry says the cost of content is a big issue: it notes that in the App Store, EA’s games mostly run from $5 to $10, compared to the $1 to $2 of other more popular games. It also notes that just before it conducted its analysis, Gameloft sliced the cost of its iPhone games to 99 cents; consequently 3 of its games leapt into the top 25 list. Source

The bottom line: Once again, these figures show how price-sensitive consumers are when it comes to mobile content. The question for the likes of EA, though, falls back to that wonderful economic concept of price elasticity: by cutting the price of a $5 game to $1, will they get 5 times as many buyers? It’s hard to get a read on that from Flurry’s data, but anecdotally, it seems that users have a much easier time paying the mental transaction cost of a 99-cent app, and the lower price tempts a lot more curious buyers.

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SIXTY-TWO PERCENT OF MOBILE VIDEO USERS SPEND MORE TIME ON THE MOBILE INTERNET than they do surfing the internet on their PCs, according to a survey from mobile video delivery company Transpera, compared to just 9 percent of people who don’t watch mobile video. There’s a wide gap in other usage stats between users and non-users of mobile video, making it clear that those who do use it are heavy mobile users in general.

There’s also some good info for potential mobile video advertisers: the company found that mobile video users eat out more, travel more and tend to earn more money than non-users. Of course, if these users are out of their home or traveling more often, and cost isn’t a concern, they might be expected to use mobile services more heavily. Source

The bottom line: Clearly people using mobile video are early adopters and heavy users of mobile data services. This is great and makes them a good target for advertisers, on one hand, but on the other, expresses that use of mobile video is still far from mainstream.

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THE MOBILE WEB ISN’T JUST LIMITED TO SMARTPHONES, browser behemoth Opera says. In its latest State of the Mobile Web report, the company says served over 10.4 billion pages to the 26.5 million users of its Opera Mini browser in June, up 8 percent over May. It reports the top ten countries for Opera Mini use in the month were Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, U.S., U.K., Poland and Nigeria, with India overtaking China last month. Source

The bottom line: Opera Mini remains a popular way for feature phone users to get online, and coupled with the use of operator-provided transcoding services, as well as good old carrier decks, remind us that browsing the mobile web isn’t limited to the likes of the iPhone and other high-end devices. Users of simpler devices remain a huge and viable audience for mobile content providers and advertisers.

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MOBILE DATA PLANS ARE ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS CONSUMERS LOOK TO CUT when they hit budget problems, says research from Strategy Analytics. It found that almost half of Americans surveyed said they’d drop mobile data completely if they needed to cut household costs, a far greater percentage than mobile voice, fixed voice, digital TV or broadband internet.

The bottom line: While mobile data use grows, it’s still viewed largely as a luxury item, rather than a necessity. Just 10 percent of people said they’d drop their fixed broadband completely, showing just how important it has become to people – meaning mobile data has a long way to go.

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TEXT, VOICE, THEN MOBILE WEB are the most common features used daily by UK mobile subscribers, says Lightspeed Research. But the gap between text and voice, and mobile web remains pretty huge: About half of those surveyed send a text every day, while a little more than a third make a call each day; but just 9 percent use the mobile web every day. Source

The bottom line: While mobile web use continues to grow, as we’ve seen from multiple data points today, there’s still a lot of room for growth and several obstacles remain. For advertisers, a bigger audience would be beneficial, so what can be done to help to grow that audience? There’s the Blyk model (documented in Peggy’s in-depth analysis), which looks to offer free service to users in exchange for ads, but perhaps other sponsorship opportunities exist. Vodafone’s “free internet days” have generated a lot of interest and usage, and these sorts of offers could represent a sponsorship opportunity.

IS THE APP INDUSTRY WORTH NEARLY $7 BILLION? Will Apple do nearly a billion dollars in revenue in its first year of the App Store? While the exact numbers are debatable, you can’t ignore the monster success Apple has had with its store (which also drives device sales, by the way). How much money has Apple made? This post, titled Apple has made no more than $20 – 45m in revenue from the app store, gives us a figure. One I might add is not too shabby for a product yet to see its first birthday. What makes this more remarkable is that Apple has captured between 1-2 percent total market share worldwide (including feature phones), and only 10.8 percent share worldwide in the smartphone segment. Few (save Juniper) have taken a stab at valuing the total app industry.

StatCounter’s recent announcement that Opera Mini surpasses the iPhone’s Safari as the most popular web browser for mobile phones is testament to the potential of the greater industry. Opera Mini is the most downloaded Java application of all time. So, while I am excited about the enthusiasm for the iPhone, I find the conversation is missing a big-picture perspective. The question we should be asking is: What is the total app market worldwide really worth? After all, Opera Mini’s success story underlines the potential of the app market beyond just the iPhone.

So, allow me to take a shot at valuing the total app industry, worldwide, for pay-apps (apps you pay to own on your phone).  This is the total value excluding Of course, we have to exclude free apps like Opera Mini.

In a nutshell: If Apple can do nearly $1 billion in sales its first year and has 10.8 percent smartphone market share worldwide, how much is the total smartphone app market worth?

This post from AppleInsider tells us that Apple could do $777 million in App Store downloads in 2009.

A 10.8 percent worldwide smartphone market share implies that the total mobile app market is $7.2 billion, if all smartphone users spend as much on apps as iPhone users do. We know that this won’t be the case. A much more likely scenario is one in which smartphone users will spend far less.

So, let’s assume users with these handsets (other than the iPhone) spend half (50 percent) of what iPhone users on App downloads. Now let’s do the math.

$7.2 billion is the extrapolated industry valuation of direct revenue from apps if consumers spent as much on apps for other platforms as they do the iPhone. Let’s take $7.2 billion minus $777 million (iPhone app share), and multiply that by 50 percent. That gives us a valuation of $3.2 billion for the non-iPhone app market, or $4 billion total, including the iPhone.

($7.2 billion – $777 million) * 0.5 = $3.2 billion non-iPhone app market.)

Given these assumptions, the total addressable market for non-iPhone smartphone users is approximately $3.2 billion in 2009 alone. This, of course is direct app revenue, and does not include advertising, in-app sales, carrier data revenues, feature phone app sales, and other yet-to-be-developed revenue models.

What does this figure represent? Is this pent-up demand in search of a marketplace? It sure looks like it. In any case, the number is staggering, and why this fact hasn’t gotten more attention is surprising.

But I can tell you from my experience at Opera, the success of the iPhone app store is great for the industry. Apple’s app store (although benefiting from massive multimedia marketing campaigns) is the proof-point our industry needed to see its own much greater potential. Apple gets high ranks for making the job of marketing or selling an app that much easier. Mainstream consumers now realize it’s not rocket science to load an app on their phone. Now it’s part of an every-day routine for many mobile users.

Apple has created a market, but does it dominate it?

AdMob’s Mobile Metrics Report recently released compares mobile Web usage to market share of mobile devices. As this chart from AdMob shows, the iPhone literally tops the charts for mobile Web usage – and that despite the fact the device only accounts for 10.8 percent market share of devices (according to Gartner’s latest estimate).

Symbian is next, followed by RIM and Windows. With the launch of the Palm Pre, greater penetration of Android devices soon to come, and Microsoft opening its Windows Skymarket app marketplace, it’s a safe bet that consumer spending on apps on other platforms might total half of what iPhone users spend on apps (If you disagree, please make your case for lower estimates in the comments below, or email me – ben@mobspot.com .)

Let’s put a growth-figure in here. If we accept the figures from Ovum, which predict 15 percent per year growth for smartphones, then you end up with an app industry worth nearly $7 billion.

Not bad. We are excited about the App Store concept, which has taken much of the pain out of discovering and buying apps. Now is the time to get equally excited about the opportunity for apps on all platforms.

And why shouldn’t we be excited? Apple’s App store has caused a shift in consumer behavior. It has captured our interest (even passion), encouraged us to explore the mobile Web, and put downloading and purchasing apps central to our daily mobile routine.

Where does this leave Apple?

It may be riding the cool factor now, but where is it written that cool apps will only be created for the iPhone? I’m confident developers are already working on more great apps for other platforms.

Apple also doesn’t have a monopoly on delivering a great consumer experience. I’m sure developers are hard at work coming up with new approaches that likewise set the bar.

My take: Apple has created a market. But it has also paved the way for some fast followers to follow suit – and even go one better. I’m excited about the avalanche of apps we’re sure to see available across all platforms, and the impact on mobile industry and consumer behavior at all levels. What do YOU expect?

About the author:

Prior to founding Mobspot, Ben was Director of Global Marketing at Opera Software, where he led multiple record-setting product launches of Opera Mini. Opera Mini is the most downloaded mobile application in the world. He has a BA from the University of Washington and an MBA from Copenhagen Business School.