Apps on the iPhone are huge. We know that. As if we needed more proof, Apple moved its billionth app earlier this afternoon. But some recent data from Compete suggests that smartphone owners who don’t have an iPhone, apparently don’t love apps. Or at least, don’t download them.
If you look at the graph below, you’ll see that iPhone owners are very diversified in the number of apps they download. Some have only 1-5, some 6-10, some over 31 (that’s me — several times over), etc. But look at the other phones surveyed. A lot of them haven’t downloaded any apps. And those that don’t have zero, seem to prefer downloading only 1-5.
Now you see why all of the other smartphone manufacturers are rushing to get their own app store solutions. Of the phones in this list, only BlackBerry has a real rival app store right now — and it just launched. It’s worth noting that Google’s Android platform was not included in the quarterly survey of 1,000 smartphone owners. Its app store, Android Market, has seen the second most amount of activity in terms of downloads behind the iPhone. But it is far behind the iPhone.
The other question asked in the survey is also somewhat interesting. While iPhone users love apps, they’re apparently not as willing to pay as much for them as much as other smartphone owners are. For exmple, 16% of Motorola smartphone owners said they would spend over $50 on an app. Only 1% of iPhone owners would pay that price. Of course, iPhone owners are spoiled with a ton of apps priced much less than that. Motorola users, forced to live in a barren wasteland of basically no apps, will gladly pay for something, anything, apparently.
