Paid apps drew $8 billion in revenue during 2012

Paid apps in the top 5 online app stores brought in revenue of $8 billion in 2012 according to a new report from research2guidance. The report wasn't all rainbows for the apps business as it stated that we have hit the dangerous point in app stores where the number of new apps is greater than the demand for them. That is the law of diminishing returns at work, which means that the monetary reward for getting that new app up and running might just not be worth it. The app stores included in the figures include the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, BlackBerry App World, Windows Phone Store and Nokia Ovi Store. The $8 billion generated by the top 5 app stores in 2012 was a rise of 27% over 2011's figures. On the other hand, the average revenue for paid apps dropped 27% from $26,720 in 2011 to $19,560 in 2012. That means that all of the increase in revenue last year can be explained as being the result of more apps being added to the stores. Keep in mind that these numbers include estimates for the fourth quarter based on actual data from Q1 through Q3 of last year.

The number of smartphone and tablet apps published hit 3 million in the third quarter of last year. The Apple App Store had a total of 951,890 apps as of the end of the third quarter while the Google Play Store was home to 453,719. The average retail price of a premium app was $2.82 at the end of Q3 with revenues hitting $3.4 billion in the three month period, which saw 12.4 billion downloads.

Other stats released by research2guidance found that last year, 179.7 million smartphones were shipped for a 16.7% gain sequentially, and were responsible for 40.4% of mobile device sales in 2012, up from 36.7%  in 2011. Samsung's market share was 31% of the mobile device market and Finnish based Nokia dropped out of the top five. During the the third quarter, Android was the only OS to gain market share according to research2guidance. Google's open source OS gained 5.3% in the three month period, while iOS lost 2.3% of market share.

source: research2guidance via TechCrunch

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Google announces $14.4 billion in revenue, $1.51 billion for Motorola in Q4 2012

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Despite record number of smartphone activations, Verizon loses $1.93 billion in Q4

Despite adding 2.1 million post-paid subscribers in the fourth quarter, as previously announced, and activating a record number of smartphones, Verizon Communications reported a $1.93 billion loss for the period. That works out to a loss of $1.48 for the quarter vs. a loss of 71 cents a share in the year ago period. But most of that red ink was spilled as a result of one-time charges such as pension costs and money spent to keep cell towers running in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Removing the one time charges results in a profit of 45 cents a share for Verizon, but that figure still failed to meet Wall Street expectations of 52 cents a share. Revenue rose 4.5% to $30 billion, topping forecasts of $29.8 billion.

Other figures cited by Verizon for the quarter include low retail post-paid churn of .95%. Verizon now has 92.5 million post-paid accounts and a total of 98.2 million retail customers. The carrier's LTE signal blankets 273 million people in 476 markets. That places Verizon on top of the charts as the largest U.S. carrier and the carrier covering the most markets with LTE.

It should be noted that the earnings numbers are for the entire company which includes Verizon's non-wireless operations such as cable television
source: Verizon via BGR

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