60% Of Apps In Android Market Are Free (Vs. 30% Or Less In Other App Stores)

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Robin Wauters currently works as a staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found working from his home or... → Learn More

App store analytics provider Distimo yesterday published its latest report, once again zooming in on the pricing of mobile applications across a variety of platforms.

Consistent with its previous findings, Google’s Android Market has by far the largest share of free applications available compared to other mobile app store, but the gap is also widening.

In July 2010, 60% of all applications on Android Market were free of charge, representing an increase of 3% since May 2010 when it was 57%.

As you can tell from the graph below, that share is more than double the share of free apps on other mobile app stores, with the exception of Palm’s App Catalog (albeit barely).

The share of free applications is smallest on Windows Marketplace for Mobile (22%), followed by the Apple App Store for iPad (26%) and RIM’s BlackBerry App World (26%).

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Let’s take a closer look at the prices of paid apps across mobile application stores.

Distimo posits that the average price of the 100 most popular apps in Android Market and Palm’s App Catalog is higher than the average price of the entire catalogue of applications.

While the average price of all applications is only 16% higher in the Apple App Store for iPad than in the App Store for iPhone, the average price of the 100 most popular applications is nearly three times as high in the former.

More than 60% of applications are priced below or equal to $2 in the App Store for iPhone, Android Market, Nokia’s Ovi Store and Palm’s App Catalog. The proportion of applications priced
below or equal to $2 is much lower in the App Store for iPad and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Notably, it seems prices of apps for iOS devices are on the rise. The proportion of paid applications priced below $1 on the Apple App Store for iPad and Apple App Store for iPhone has decreased in both in July 2010, from 30% to 25% and from 49% to 45%, respectively.

(click image for full size)

(click image for full size)

Company: Distimo
Website: distimo.com
Launch Date: January 5, 2009

We know app stores. Distimo was founded to solve the challenges created by a widely fragmented app store marketplace filled with equally fragmented information and statistics. Distimo was launched shortly after the introduction of the first app store. App stores have clearly shown since that time that they are the way forward for content distribution. The app store model offers an enormous opportunity for developers to get their content out and dramatically improves content discovery by consumers. However, the mobile market...

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