Analyst firm research2guidance said that Apple’s share of the App Store market “showed a kind of stabilisation” during the first quarter of 2011, having previously slipped by 24 points to 57 percent in the two years to the end of 2010. According to the company, the rebound is due to the growth of iPad users, who are “heavy app users.” It said that Apple will maintain this competitive advantage until other app store operators launch competitive offerings for tablet devices, and while non-iOS tablet shipment volumes remain low.

There are also factors limiting the amount of time rival vendors have to catch Apple, research2guidance argues. This includes the increasing penetration of smartphones, because “the more smartphones become a mass-market phenomena, the less app downloads a new user will add,” and the fact that the more apps that are downloaded, the more a user becomes “locked-in” to their existing platform – reducing the potential for churn.

The company concludes that even though Apple’s competitors may be able to push Apple’s market share down further, “Apple will still keep the ‘heavy-downloaders’ from the early days for a long time.”