Some 81 billion smartphone and tablet apps had been downloaded cumulatively as of the end of September 2012, with 89 percent of these acquired from the native storefronts of the smart device operating systems, according to ABI Research.

Aapo Markkanen, senior analyst with the firm, said that “the current status quo is based on storefronts that the operating system vendors provide as part of the OS experience, and there is no evidence that this would change in the future”.

The research firm noted that twelve months ago it still looked as if mobile operators could find a viable business case in the curation of Android apps – an opportunity which evaporated “once Google got its storefront act together”.

“Today, it makes sense for operators to distribute apps only under special circumstances, such as the ones that we’re seeing in China,” Markkanen said.

ABI also poured some doubt on the viability of niche storefronts, noting that “there is a certain demand for specialist stores, but even then the niche players should position themselves as recommendation channels driving traffic to native storefronts and not actual distributors”.

But there may still be an opportunity in certain areas such as “B2B apps and the consumer categories that the universal storefronts don’t want to be associated with – most notably adult content”.

Markkanen continued: “Running a user-friendly app distribution channel is expensive. Besides the adequate hosting and billing systems it takes quite a lot of human labour, since successful app discovery requires some form of editorial approach.”