It’s Time to Shine for Web and Mobile Apps in Asia

Monday, March 14, 2011

Appearing to go hand in hand with the resilient popularity of the devices that use them in Asia, web and mobile apps appear to be on the verge of even greater success in the future.

The stage seems to be set for these apps, prominent though they may already be in the region, to scale new heights of success very soon. As revealed in a ReadWriteWeb article, a study commissioned by mobile app store operator GetJar and run by consulting firm Chetan Sharma Consulting has projected the volume of the mobile-app market to reach $17.5 billion by 2012.

Said growth is also projected to go hand in hand with a corresponding increase in the number of mobile application downloads, which are seen to balloon to nearly 50 billion by 2012 from a little over 7 billion last year. This development has been spurred by the overwhelming popularity of smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone and those running Google’s Android operating system.

GetJar founder and chief executive officer, Ilja Laurs, further predicted that the future success of mobile devices would spell the end of desktop Internet, and that mobile apps play a key role in this future success. Should this indeed be the case, the Asian region would appear to be ahead. Apps, found the study, are most popular in Asia, accounting for 37 percent of the global download total this year.

Other experts agree, also expecting the use of web applications in the region to grow rapidly in 2011 and perhaps beyond as well. As reported in CMS Wire, the fact that the BPO industries in China, the Philippines and India are booming means more and more organizations in the region are electing to use web services or applications as ecosystems to help their partners, clients and employees coordinate and communicate. This is also due to the fact that the countries in this region lack the adequate infrastructure for these surging businesses. More and more applications are being seen migrating to the Web, and dramatic growth in the adoption of these applications is to be expected in the coming years.

This development is also going hand in hand with the surge of the number of services being delivered over the cloud. Clients switching to web apps realize a pressing need to make use of cloud-based solutions in order to enjoy true scalability and consistent performance and, by doing so, overcome the inherent weaknesses of infrastructure inadequacy. In addition, the rise of these services will only further stimulate the increased utilization of mobile devices for such uses as multimediacontent streaming; application download, installation and use; and social networking, among others.

Indicative of the growing popularity of web and mobile apps is the sheer breadth and variety of apps available nowadays. At the recently concluded Accelerate 2010, a mobile and tech industry event held in Singapore, the top 50 apps (either developed in Asia or primarily targeting Asian markets) were given distinction based on nominations and votes from mobile and web app users, and from this 50 a further 10 winners were singled out by distinguished judges. The apps that won ran the gamut from social marketplace apps to simple business-chat applications for websites and everything in between—indicative of the robustness of existing app markets and serving as a harbinger for developments in the near future.

Thanks & Regards,

"Remember Me When You Raise Your Hand For Dua"
Raheel Ahmed Khan
System Engineer
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sirraheel@gmail.com

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