The App Store Gets A "Top Grossing" Section. Premium Apps Finally Have A Chance
Since launching, applications in the “Top Apps” lists on iTunes have done very well — if you can make it to the top 50 or the top 10, you can expect to see your sales figures get a very significant boost. Unfortunately, up until now the store has done a poor job helping high quality and more expensive apps get much exposure. Sure, there’s been a “Top Paid’ section, but this was gauged by popularity alone and has been dominated by apps that cost a dollar or two, since those were the apps that people were most likely to buy impulsively. This meant that “premium” apps — say, those running $5, $10, or Heaven forbid, $20 — had a much harder time getting any exposure.
The new Top Grossing section should help with this. Now apps that have sold moderately well at a high price will have a chance to get as much exposure as a cheap app that has sold very well. To give an idea of the difference, here’s a list of the current price of each app in the Top Grossing section, which includes applications that run as high as $99.99. In comparison, the Top Paid section currently has nine out of ten top apps selling at $2.99 or less (the one outlier is at $4.99).
Top Grossing
- I Am T-Pain — $2.99
- AppBox Pro — $0.99
- TomTom U.S. & Canada — $99.99
- Uno — $4.99
- Golfshot: Golf GPS — $29.99
- The Game of Life Classic Edition — $4.99
- Modern Combat: Sandstorm — $6.99
- Scrabble — $4.99
- MobileNavigator North America — $89.99
- Civilization Revolution — $4.99
Also worth pointing out — it looks like Apple is heavily downplaying its Free Apps section, which currently only has one application appearing on the App Store’s homepage.