iPhone mHealth application market to grow by 44% to 13,000 apps in 2012

Some 9,000 iPhone health applications are already offered by Apple's AppStore and the number is expected to continue rising further in coming months, according to a report published by MobiHealthNews.

The report, which is based on an analysis of Apple's AppStore, further indicates that by next summer the number of iPhone health applications will rise by 44 percent to some 13,000 apps.

The report shows that the average price of a paid health app is gradually rising as the average price for a paid health application rose to $3.21 on July 2011 from $2.77 in February.

Another report, published earlier this month by research company Technavio, predicts that the global mobile health applications market will reach $4.1 billion by 2014 compared to $1.7 billion in 2010.

"The number of health apps for consumers has grown at a steady, linear rate over the past 18 months," MobileHealthNews researchers wrote. "We expect it to continue on this track unless the regulatory environment changes drastically and scares off would-be developers from creating useful health apps for consumers"

The MobiHealthNews report indicates that the largest group of consumer health apps in the AppStore are cardio fitness apps, which account to 16.36% of all iPhone mHealth apps. The majority of these apps are running apps, which have attracted millions of users in the past year.

Diet related apps account to 14.15%, ahead of stress and relaxation apps (11.4%) and women's health apps (7.27%).

The authors note that while Apple’s health, fitness and medical categories claim to offer thousands more apps, many of these can't be seriously considered as mHealth related.