The proliferation of mobile app stores over the past several months has impacted consumers, businesses and the mobile industry as a whole. Consumers are attracted by the notion of being able to customize and do more with their mobile devices. Some have predicted that it is likely consumers will choose their next device based on available apps, or continue using a particular device because of the apps they have already incorporated into everyday life.
For businesses, having an application store strategy is a must. Knowing which devices are most used by your target audience is a critical foundation step. Simply developing an app, and plunking it into an app store for a low price is not enough. With over 25,000 apps available at the Apple App Store alone, the chances of success and profitability are slim. The stories about developers seeing huge success with their apps have drawn thousands of developers on the platform. However, a one-hit-wonder is a far cry from stable success and growth, which requires a lot of marketing skills to consistently keep a company in the top app lists. There is a need for developers to have access to business development, marketing, and merchandizing expertise.

The Apple iPhone ushered in a new era of mobile marketing with “real web” browsing and its application store, which along with similar virtual stores from Microsoft, Google, RIM and Nokia (the latter two planned to launch next month), have opened new opportunities for advertisers. In its first nine months alone, Apple’s App Store has seen more than one billion downloads. According to some reports, application store user numbers are expected to grow by 400% to reach over 100 million in the next five years.

Ad measurement metrics are still being adapted for application marketing, but advertisers are starting to seize the opportunity of apps as an alternative to digital display ads. The number of branded apps aimed at tech-savvy young consumers is likely to soar in the coming year.

Applications have had a big impact on the growth of mobile data usage on mobile platforms – more than half the ad requests for iPhone and Android were from applications, according to AdMob's March Mobile Metrics Report. Despite the relatively small number iPhones, and especially Androids, in the market, these platforms are continuing to grab market share from their competitors. AdMob gathers statistics from its own platform, which distributes ads to mobiles, and reports that total ads requested are up by 17% to 7.7 billion.

Apple iPhone has over 22% of all ad requests, but Android requests have grown by about 50%every month since the G1's launch last year. Android is steadily gaining in mobile ad market share, tied with the Palm OS accounting for 6% of all mobile ad requests according to the latest data from AdMob.

However, the iPhone is still the clear leader; iPhones outnumber Android phones by nearly 20 to one. AdMob measured 72 million ad requests in the U.S. for Android in March 2009, versus 607 million for the iPhone. Wordlwide, the iPhone had 995 million ad requests (1.66 billion if one includes the iPod touch numbers). As more Android phones are introduced, its numbers will grow.

One major driver of ad requests has been the increase in standalone apps. AdMob measured the growth in ad requests following the launch of the Android and iPhone app stores, and found that the growth rate for the iPhone was 88% monthly versus 47% for the Android – both outpaced other platforms by a wide margin. Once other app stores gain more footing, it will be interesting to see whether the relative strength of the iPhone and Android persists.