Readwriteweb.com reported a claim made by the market research firm, Juniper.  In a report they released this week, they expect, by the year 2015, consumers will have downloaded at least 25 billion mobile applications to their Smartphones.  Compared to the 2.6 billion applications downloaded in 2009, this will be a mammoth increase.

Notably, the predicted increase is due to worldwide “app stores,” including China and India.  The report mentioned “app stores” Getjar, China Unicom, India’s Bharti and the Vodafone 360 app and games shop, which is now available in more than 60 countries on 247 mobile networks.  The Getjar “app store” just celebrated its 1 billionth download last month.  In comparison to the Apple App Store (offers 225,000 applications), Getjar has a selection of 65,000 applications to choose from.

The report also addressed the discrepancy in forecasted mobile download numbers.  In an article in June, Getjar’s CMO Patrick Mork predicted 7 billion mobile applications would be downloaded by consumers in 2009, which is much higher than Juniper’s 2.6 billion.  He also suggested that, by 2012, 50 billion apps would be downloaded, which is double the number projected by Juniper for the year 2015; Mork’s figures came from research report commissioned by Getjar.

Juniper’s report also pointed out that simply copying Apple’s App Store model “just won’t cut it.”  In their eyes, this will not lure developers to build apps for a particular platform.  The market research firm made it clear, “an app store would need to demonstrate sufficient scale in order for developers to get involved.”