7 Mobile Insights May 2009 including iPhone App and Java download statistics

The past 9 months have been interesting in more ways than Apple achieving 1 billion app downloads from the iPhone appstore:

1. Mobile ad spend in 2008 in the UK exceeded expectations and doubled vs. 2007 (http://tinyurl.com/qengsl)
2. Over 400% growth in apps downloaded 2008 vs 2007 driven by the iPhone Appstore as well as free appstores (Getjar, Mobile9, Mobango, etc), device manufacturer appstores (Blackberry App World, Nokia Ovi, Samsung Mobile Applications, etc) and mobile operators (Vodafone Appstore, O2 Limus, Orange World Appstore, etc)
3. Although iPhone apps get all the attention Golden Gekko has found that when launching apps/games across both iPhone and other platforms the number of downloads on other platforms (Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Blackberry, etc) outnumber iPhone 10 to 1 (contact us for more info).
4. With approx 2% iPhone device penetration Apple Appstore has an impressive 12% (21% including iTouch) market share in volume of mobile apps downloaded in Europe and North America (Strategy Analytics: How Apple Change the Market for Mobile Applications, http://tinyurl.com/o52cm7).
5. Although iPhone app development can cost as little as $12.000 a well-designed app can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000, take six to eight weeks to develop, and a couple more weeks more to be approved by Apple (http://tinyurl.com/qke9xb)
6. 52% of mobile users play games on their phone and about one-in-ten mobile phone users in Europe (8%) claim to have participated in mobile marketing efforts (MMA European Mobile Attitude and Usage Study, December 2008)
7. 51 percent of mobile phone users in the USA access content using their mobile phone on a weekly basis (http://tinyurl.com/p95opg)