That would represent a fairly major rise from last year's total of 2.4 billion, ABI claiming the rapid adoption of smartphones and the expansion of proprietary application stores is fuelling this growth.
App acceleration
As detailed by FierceMobileContent, ABI Research believes total downloads will rise to a peak figure of just under 7 billion in 2013.
iPhone is set to be the major force behind this expansion, with more than half of all downloads being made on the App Store in each and every year until 2015.
"The iPhone will continue to be the leading app platform, with a database of over 125,000 applications offering niche and localised content," wireless research associate Bhavya Khanna told the site.
"Other platforms are still playing catch-up, with Android being the fastest gainer among them. ABI Research expects that with over 30,000 applications now available, over 800 million Android applications will be downloaded in 2010."
No market movement
However, while ABI Research notes new platforms such as Samsung's bada and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 are both set to launch later this year. The firm believes both OS will have a very limited impact on total number of app downloads.
Indeed, looking across the firm's five year forecast, while Android shows a slight rise in downloads, every other platform bar iPhone remains static until 2015.
While ABI Research believes downloads will fall back to around 6.4 billion by the report's end, this is actually only due to a predicted drop in iPhone app downloads in the last two years of the forecast, rather than any collective shifts in the market.
Revenue slumpRegardless, most worrying for developers will be ABI Research's assertion that revenue generated per app will actually fall over the following five years.
The firm believes increased competition is already forcing studios to drop their prices, and the rise in free-apps paid for by advertising over the next few years will continue to erode the price paid for apps can charge.
"As competition heats up," added VP of forecasting Jake Saunders, "App makers are both dropping prices and 'going free' to stay on top of the download charts."
[source: FierceMobileContent]
