Analyst predicts Apple will have 76% of the mobile app market this year, 60% by 2014

Remember analytical firm iSuppli? They were bought out by a company called IHS which recently issued a report about the future of the Apple App Store, Google's Android Market, Nokia's Ovi Store and RIM's BlackBerry App World. The report noted that back in 2008, trhe App Store was the only viable online applications store in a market with $260.01 million in sales. By 2009, the value of the sales was $830.6 million which grew to $2.1 billion last year.

Back in February, IHS said that Apple controlled 82.7% of the global mobile app revenue and forecast that the Cupertino based firm would control just a little more than half of all the market by 2014. Approximately 2 months later, the forecast has improved a bit for Apple with the company expected to have 76% of the app market by the end of 2011 and by 2014 will still hold a commanding 60% share of the global app market.

Still, the growth of the App Store will cool down going forward. Last year, App Store sales increased at a torrid 131.9% rate, that will slow down this year to a 63.4% increase. Growth in the Android Market is expected to slow from the unsustainable 861.5% seen in 2010 to a still sizzling increase of 295.4% this year.

The Top 5 global application stores last year were the Apple App Store with an 82.7% global share, followed by the BlackBerry App World with a 7.75% piece of the pie. Third and fourth are the Nokia Ovi Store and the Android Market with shares of 4.9% and 4.7% respectively.

During this year, there will have been 18.1 billion apps downloaded across all platforms, nearly double from the 9.5 billion downloaded last year. By 2014 that number will grow to 33 billion apps. Apple will lead the way this year with 10.3 billion apps installed, followed by 5.8 billion apps installed for Android devices.

source: iSuppli