True Corp’s chief information officer for convergence Pichit Thanyodom said Thailand’s mobile-application market this year was expected to more than double from last year, when it was worth a total of Bt100 million to all operators. True’s strategy involves adding 700 applications to its present line-up and providing them to all smart-phone users instead of focusing only on True Move’s customers.

“With our existing 200 applications and an extra 700 applications we’ve developed for this year, we believe we’ll be able to generate Bt100 million from our mobile-application business. This will include sales of partners’ applications, True’s applications and mobile advertising,” he said.

The 700 newcomers will be applications with price tags, for three major mobile platforms – iPhone, BlackBerry and Android – as well as both individual and corporate applications.

He said revenue from True’s mobile-application business was small last year, because from the 200 applications then offered, there were 1.3 million downloads, and about 80 per cent of them were free.

“This year, we’ll see more aggressive moves into mobile applications for BlackBerry and Android platforms. Last year, most BlackBerry owners used only social-network-related applications, while the devices are capable of many functions. For Android, with its open-source origins, there will be a lot of phones from many manufacturers, and this will lead to an increase in the number of applications for Android phones. Extreme growth is expected for the Android platform this year, along with iPhone and BlackBerry,” he said.

Last year’s 1.3-million downloads of True Corp’s applications covered five platforms: iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile. However, 80 per cent of them were for iPhones.

Pichit said the value of the global mobile-application market was about US$4.2 billion (Bt139 billion) last year. That involved about 3 billion downloads, and 95 per cent of these were made from Apple’s app store. At the same time, the number of mobile applications spiralled upwards. For example, the offerings at Apple’s app store increased from 50,000 applications to 140,000 by the end of last year. Android applications rose in 2009 from 4,900 to 20,000 and are expected to reach 80,000 by the end of this year, he said.

Source : The Nation

Tags: Mobile, True