Handango has released the Handango Yardstick, a quarterly report on the state of the mobile software economy. This quarter, the Handango Yardstick focuses on the effects that new wireless PDAs and data- capable phones are having on the mobile software market.

Overall, Handango found that smartphone users are hungry for software applications, partially spurred by the wireless content that can be purchased and downloaded on demand over-the-air. The company said smartphone device users -- those using data-centric devices such as the Sony Ericsson P800, Orange SPV, Handspring Treo or T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition -- on average purchase 291% more software and digital media per purchase (in USD) than data-capable phone users and 5.39% more than PDA users.

In addition to software consumption, the Handango Yardstick reports the average file size of applications purchased over-the-air by users of various devices. Pocket PC users purchase larger applications on average -- 1164 kilobytes per download. Java and Windows Powered Smartphone device users purchase files averaging 523 and 467 kilobytes, respectively. The company said these facts highlight the dual way in which software drives additional revenue for mobile operators -- through software purchases as well as substantial network traffic from downloads.

The report also shows that the first quarter of 2003 witnessed a surge in the number of new mobile applications and new software vendors. The number of new mobile applications grew a record-setting 7,467 while the number of new software vendors totaled 1,015, also a new record. The average selling price of mobile applications continued to fall to $16.25, down $1.40 from last quarter, due largely to the lower price points of phone applications. However, compensating for this fall, the average number of applications purchased each time increased by 0.04 to 2.14.

According to Handango, the report incorporates worldwide data from more than 100 mobile software portals, reporting on trends across the entire mobile software economy and major mobile operating systems including Java, Symbian OS, Palm OS, Pocket PC, Linux and others.