200m downloads for Getjar

News

Tim Green Apr 2 2008, 10:45am

The number of mobile apps downloaded from GetJar has reached 200 million in two years.

The Lithuania based service describes itself as a cross between Amazon and wikipedia, offering users free ad-supported downloads in return for feedback. It reports significant interest in personal productivity applications, such as calendars, reminders and synchronisation tools, especially for the Windows Mobile and BlackBerry platforms.

Video applications too are growing in popularity, and GetJar predicts that GPS technology could be the next big thing. While mobile games remain very popular, they currently represent around 20 per cent of downloads.

Overall, Getjar detects a growing interest in niche products. “As the quality, variety and relevance of free mobile applications has grown, so specialist, niche products have become mass market brands,” said Ilja Laurs, CEO of GetJar. “The hottest free applications including mig33, eBuddy and cellity are seeing massive growth in user numbers, and will continue to do so as major industry forces such as carriers expand their offering of free applications.”