Apple's App Store Unfazed by Competition

The Apple App Store has held strong in the face of competition from the Android Market and other brands' stores. Reporting from industry analysts at IHS Inc. shows that Apple's store showed year-over-year growth of 132% from 2009 to 2010, with revenue ballooning to $1.8 billion.

While the Android Market showed much higher year-over-year growth of 862%, it still holds the smallest market share of major app stores at only 4.7%. This puts it behind the Nokia Ovi store (4.9% market share), BlackBerry App World (7.7%), and far behind Apple's App Store (82.7%).

All three of these competing stores took bites out of the 92.8% market share Apple experienced in 2009, but the App Store still undeniably dominates the industry.

Jack Kent, analyst of mobile media for IHS, reasoned the Apple App Store's success in the face of a glut of Android phones:

[Apple] has been able to maintain advantage by leveraging its tightly controlled ecosystem — combining compelling hardware and content with the capability to offer consumers a trusted, integrated and simple billing service via iTunes.

IHS predicts that Apple will hold on to 50% or more of the market share for apps through 2014.

Source