Revenue from mobile applications will top $25 billion by 2014, according to Juniper Research. The market researcher says this growth will occur because of "a raft of store launches targeting both high-end and mass market handsets."

In its new mobile applications report, "Mobile Applications & App Stores: Business models, opportunities & forecasts 2009-2014," Juniper found that the overwhelming majority of mobile app revenues come from one-off downloads, rather than subscription fees. However, in the longer term, Juniper expects operators to see greater benefits from data revenues associated with app usage, rather than money made from selling the apps and content.

Not surprisingly, Juniper expects games to remain the top category both in overall downloads and revenues, but says that multimedia and entertainment apps will soon be responsible for the largest share of revenues from value-added services.