App Insights

The rate of iOS and Android device adoption has surpassed that of any consumer technology in history.  Compared to recent technologies, smart device adoption is being adopted 10X faster than that of the 80s PC revolution, 2X faster than that of 90s Internet Boom and 3X faster than that of recent social network adoption.  Five years into the smart device growth curve, expansion of this new technology is rapidly expanding beyond early adopter markets such as such as North America and Western Europe, creating a true worldwide addressable market.

The iTunes App Store and Google Play now offer more than 600,000 apps each.  And Apple’s most recent earnings call revealed that the company has paid out more than $5.5 billion to developers since the launch of the App Store.  With unprecedented consumer adoption of iOS and Android devices, low barriers to entry for developers and throngs of paying customers, Apple and Google have created massive economic opportunities for developers.

This month, the world’s two largest mobile app platform providers, Apple and Google, enter what is arguably the most critical month of the year for each company, when each hosts their annual developer conference, the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) and Google I/O.  While engaged in a multi-year platform war, their success largely depends on innovation provided for their platforms by the third party developer community.

Flurry recently quantified China’s meteoric adoption of iOS and Android applications.  While China ranked 10th in application sessions at the beginning of 2011, it finished the year in 2nd place, only behind the United States.  With its large population and rapidly emerging middle class, adoption of apps vaulted China into the position of world’s 2nd largest app economy.

Smartphones and tablets continue to break new consumer technology adoption records.  From earlier research, Flurry found that iOS and Android smart devices have experienced twice the uptake rate compared to that of Internet adoption, and four times the rate compared to that of PC adoption.  Following this unprecedented adoption, advertising dollars are beginning to flow into mobile.