Date: 27/05/2011

In-Stat: Tablet application revenues to top $15 Billion in 2015

In-Stat says the market for tablet applications will continue to develop its own identity in the coming years, particularly as the market potential develops. As a result of its research, In-Stat expects tablet application revenues will top $15 billion in 2015.

"While the tablet application experience is very similar to the smart phone application experience, there are some distinctions," says Amy Cravens, Senior Analyst. "Although many smart phone applications are appearing in tablet form, developers are having to recreate smart phone applications to adjust for differences in the tablet form factor, and while the different versions of the OSs are likely to merge in the future, tablet applications are likely to differ due to growing differences in the platform and usage models."

Some of the report data includes:
Over 75% of the survey respondents owning a tablet have downloaded applications.
Despite the rapid diversification in the tablet market, Apple is expected to maintain its tablet application market dominance over Android and other tablet OSs, but will see its 95% market share slip substantially.
As one might expect, free applications dominate the number of downloads while paid applications dominate revenue.

Survey respondents indicated that nearly 80% of tablet applications downloaded were through an OS provider store and the majority of respondents prefer using the application store as the preferred method of payment for both the applications and in-application purchases.