Research firm In-Stat said that building on its base as an offshoot of the more established smartphone app market, the tablet app sector will “continue to develop its own identity in the coming years,” with revenue forecast to top US$15 billion in 2015. According to the company, 75 percent of tablet owners polled have downloaded apps, with nearly 80 percent of tablet apps downloaded from an OS provider store. It was noted that “the majority of respondents prefer using the application store as the preferred method of payment for both the applications and in-application purchases.”

Amy Cravens, senior analyst with In-Stat, noted: “Although many smartphone applications are appearing in tablet form, developers are having to recreate smartphone applications to adjust for differences in the tablet form factor, and while the different versions of the OSs are likely to merge in the future, tablet applications are likely to differ due to growing differences in the platform and usage models.”