By Narayan Bhat, TMCnet Contributor
Taptu, a search engine that indexes touch screen content, has said in its second quarterly report that the Mobile Touch Web had grown 35 percent since last quarter, pushing its annual growth rate up to 232 percent.
This phenomenal growth, according to Taptu, has put Mobile Touch Web ahead of the App Store, currently showing an annual growth of 144 percent, but behind the Android Market, which is growing at an annual rate of 403 percent.
The report, which covers January 2010-April 2010, says Mobile Touch Web sites have also grown in number. “The number of touch friendly websites is dramatically higher than just four months ago,” report says.
At the end of 2010, Taptu had found 326,600 touch friendly websites. In April 2010, that number has increased to 440,100 sites. This represents a 35 percent increase in the quarter and an annual growth rate of 232 percent.
At this current run rate, the report predicts that the Mobile Touch Web will increase to 1.1 million sites by the end of the year, nearly twice Taptu’s original forecast, fueled in part by the continued consumer love affair with touch screen phones, and even more importantly the rising sales of mid-range touch-enabled devices.
App Store numbers are also on the rise, showing a comparative annual growth rate of 144 percent up to 185,000 apps. Yet, the search engine says, the largest growth has been in the Android (News – Alert) Market, where there are 35,947 apps.
Though iPhone is very popular in America, it only accounts for 10 percent of the worldwide market for touch screen devices, says Taptu.
On the Mobile Touch Web, mCommerce continues to dominate, representing over 22 per cent of all touch-enabled sites, just the way games dominate the App Store.
“The strong growth we observed over this quarter really took us by surprise but with device shipments of touch screen phones forecast by Gartner (News – Alert) to reach 360m for 2010 it seems brands and content owners are waking up to this new mass market medium,” said Steve Ives, Taptu’s CEO.
“It’s also crucial to note that iPhone (News – Alert) represents at most 10 per cent of device forecasts. With mass market touch screen devices flooding the market, many without app stores, the Mobile Touch Web is meeting this consumer demand.”
Narayan Bhat is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Narayan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Erin Harrison
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