A study released yesterday indicated that the market for mobile device software programs should rocket to $17.5 billion(Dh64bn) within three years.
Downloads of mobile applications to handsets will leap from slightly more than seven billion in 2009 to nearly 50 billion in 2012, according to the independent study commissioned by GetJar, the world's second largest app store.
"It is easy to see how mobile apps will eclipse the traditional desktop internet," GetJar Chief Executive Ilja Laurs said. "It makes perfect sense that mobile devices will kill the desktop."
Apple runs the world's top App Store online at iTunes and the culture-changing firm was pronounced a "mobile devices company" by its iconic Chief Executive Steve Jobs in January.
Mobile applications have been around since the late 1990s but began to "blossom in earnest" after Apple launched its App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch devices in mid-2008, according to the report summary.
The annual market for mobile applications is $6bn and internet firms large and small are racing to offer services that tap into geo-location, camera, touch-screen and other features of mobile phones.
Seventeen per cent of GetJar users already spend more time on Internet-linked mobile phones than they do on desktop computers, according to Laurs.
IPhone owners are the most advanced users of mobile applications, spending more time and money on software for their smartphones than they do on music, he added.
The Apple App Store is reported to have more than 150,000 iPhone applications on its virtual shelves and recently passed the three-billion-download milestone. Google has weighed into the smartphone arena with an Android mobile software used on an array of devices including its own touch-screen Nexus One handsets.