Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Why do businesses want mobile apps?

Here at Appguppy, our focus is always on the customer.  After all, that’s who inspired our hacker to code for hours and hours so that our frontend, custom mobile-app creation and dissemination tool would be available in just a couple of weeks, on September 15th.  

So one of the things we’ve done at Appguppy is to take a really close look at what’s driving the demand for mobile apps among our customers.  

Current estimates indicate that combined spending on consumer and business mobile apps will top $13 billion worldwide by 2012, a nearly fivefold increase over 2009.  What we wanted to know is, why? 

Mobile app demand driver #1: There’s been an exponential rise in smartphone usage

The number of phone users in the US currently totals 236.6 million and will grow to 256.2 million by 2015.  Of these, the number of smartphone users just jumped by 10% to 82.2 million in the three months through July, according to a report by metrics company comScore Inc. released today.

Mobile app demand driver #2: Consumers use their smartphones to make purchases

According to Google's “Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users”  from April 2011, 74% of smartphone users have made a purchase as a result of using a smartphone.

Mobile app demand driver #3: Mobile apps drive purchasing on smartphones
Among US smartphone owners, 31% who reported completing a purchase as a result of mobile marketing, did so through usage of an app, according to a survey by Mobile Dependence Day conducted in June 2011.  The survey also found that two leading categories of mobile apps downloaded by smartphone users include shopping/retail and dining/restaurant apps.    

Woah, every 1 of out of 3 consumers uses an app to hear about, research and purchase something from a business?!  That’s a number that really got our attention. 

So there you have it:  Based on the behavioral patterns of consumers, mobile apps are getting businesses “made” and “paid.”