According to Gartner Inc., 2010 is expected to be a big year in mobile application downloads with a forecasted $6.2 billion worth of downloads. Compared to the $4.2 billion spent in 2009, mobile app downloads are on an obvious incline.

The question is: what is everyone downloading? A statement by Stephanie Baghdassarian, Research Director at Gartner, answers this question well:

“Games remain the number one application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money.”

Increasing amounts of money for whom? According to Gartner, Apple practically owned the market in 2009 and if the forecasted numbers for 2010 are accurate, Apple should hold on to a minimum of two-thirds of the growing market this year.

Whether mobile app downloads is a passing fad or not, can be answered by looking at the forecasted numbers. Gartner further predicts that 2013 will see app downloads in the 21.6 range for a total of $29.5 billion in revenue. At least 25% of this revenue will be generated from free download versions, supported by advertising.

“Growth in smart phone sales will not necessarily mean that consumers will spend more money, but it will widen the addressable market for an offering that will be advertising-funded,” explains Baghdassarian.

It seems that our mobile turned world has revolutionized the whole concept of advertising.

However, the challenge ahead for mobile application developers are the new fees the carriers are going to charge consumers for the usage of these apps. Currently consumers are hogging a lot of resources over the wireless networks. Since the iPhone came on the market data consumption has gone through the roof. The carriers may have no other choice than to up prices or put caps on usage. One thing is for certain is that the days of fixed data plans are over.

The innovative culture at Apple will continue to test the mettle of the carrier network. The iPhone 4 along with the HTC Evo 46 are going to turn consumers on with amazing video viewing on their new high resolution screens.

The next-generation of mobile customer may very well be known as the “network hog generation”.