Mobile Application Economy rose in 2015 when for the first time the mobile traffic surpassed the desktop traffic in the life of Internet’s existence. Global mobile app revenues are expected to grow to a whopping 76.52 billion US dollars in 2017. And well, it’s just getting started. We have put together a forecast from several experts to help you visualize how mobile app economy is going to look like in the next five years.

What’s the gold mine like?

Mobile app revenues will only grow in the next five years since the world is at the threshold of a dawn of a mobile era. App Annie reports that the global annual smartphone application revenue is predicted to break $101 billion by the end of 2020. And it’s already begun since there’s an expectation of 24% of growth in the application market, and would reach at $50.9bn in 2016. That’s because mobile applications are not only for media and games anymore. There’s social media, banking, shopping, travelling, hospitality, medical care, information and sharing – virtually everything on mobile phones.
Takeaway: If your business is not on mobile phone, it’s extinct.

Who gets the biggest pie?

One of the many interesting things of the mobile app economy in the next five years is that the mature mobile markets will sell them to less mature ones keeping the economy always at the driver seat. The king of the mobile app market, much to everyone’s chagrin, will be China that’s poised to surpass the U.S. in terms of total revenue from app stores by the first half of 2016. But why? That’s because it has done it before in early 2015. Among the other fastest growing markets are Mexico, Argentina, India and Indonesia. However, mature markets such as the United States, Japan and China will still be riding the overall app revenue growth.
Takeaway: Build B2B mobile apps for mature markets, and B2C for fast growing ones to get the best of both worlds.

Which domains will lead in apps?

It’s still gaming right now leading the roost with 45.4 billion downloads in 2015. However, the non-gaming categories together may rival the gaming applications with entertainment, media, music and social networking becoming more and more niche. By 2020, it is predicted that these categories will take the downloads to 182.1 billion.
Takeaway: Focus on fantasy sports mobile applications or gaming applications, while building other mobile app business ideas side by side.

How much will apps eat away our time?

The time spent on mobile phones reached 63% in 2015 and most of this time was taken away by communication apps. Media and video category ofcourse led this growth with 93% of the time of the users and this is further growing. But soon enterprise collaboration mobile applications will be hot property. 40 percent of sales organizations will rely primarily on mobile digital technology for their sales automation initiatives by 2020.
Takeaway: Keep a social network layer on all your mobile applications to keep the users engaged at all times.
Apart from these, there’s a prevailing belief that mobile app failures will give rise to increased security mechanisms by 2020. Now that’s another positive transformation the mobile app economy can contribute to the rest of the world.