Mobile downloads will hit 20 billion per year by 2014

2014 is sufficiently far enough away for your average analyst to avoid being held to account.

That said, I think the figure of 20 billion application downloads per year, per planet, should be pretty accurate.

So Apple have done 1.5 billion in about a year, with, what… 40-odd million devices out there (including iPod Touch). So… 20 billion… well, you know what, that doesn’t seem that much, if you sit and think about it.

There’s a lot of future gazing involved, eh?

Say for example that the fabled 400 million Nokia devices that are meant to have access to Ovi Store by 2010 actually materialise. Let’s make that 500m users. Assume each of them downloads what… 24 applications per year? 2 per month?

That’s 12 billion downloads a year. For just Nokia.

Yeah.

I think fag packet mathematics along with a pinch of salt support this prediction by Juniper Research. Here’s the meat from their announcement:

New market projections from Juniper Research have shown that the number of mobile application downloads will approach almost 20 billion per annum by 2014. The increasing deployment of app stores targeted at mass market handsets, allied to enhancements in storefront interfaces and an ever increasing array of titles appealing to wider demographics have been the main factors driving this market.

The Mobile Applications research found that the remarkable success of the App Store – which passed 1 billion downloads in April – has led a raft of vendors, OS providers and operators to launch their own storefronts, with more poised to launch over the coming months.