I have been digging into the excellent research put out by consultancy Chetan Sharma, which digs deep into the telecom industry. Today I was shocked to read that more than 7 billion mobile apps were downloaded in 2009.

That is a shocking number. Now, some of this is misleading, I realize. I have several contacts in the mobile apps business which tell me that it is still hard to earn a living from mobile apps, unless you hit a real home-run and are in the top 5% of apps, it's hard to make money. The reason for this is that many apps are free, or very low cost, so if you include a revenue share from a partner such as Apple you really need to sell millions and millions of apps to make any money.

But I also think this number is evidence of where the mobile market is going, and it will become even more exciting as service providers open up their systems some more, experimenting with platforms such as Android, and encouraging the development of more app ecosystems.

Some more facts, all according to Chetan Sharma:

• The 7 billion apps downloads
  generated about $4.1 billion in
  revenue, 12% of which came from
  advertising.
• Asia had the highest percentage of
  the download share, but North America
  had the highest share of the apps
  revenue accounting for over 50% of
  the total revenue.
• Text messaging is still the largest
  revenue generator from data services.
  But some new fast-growing services
  such as music music, video, gaming,
  and location-based services are
  gaining traction.
• Nokia is shrinking in terms of
  revenue share.