Friday, December 17, 2010

The State of the iOS App Store

Quiz: how much does the average iOS app cost? What percentage of apps are free? And can you guess which application has over 1 million ratings in the iPhone App Store?


The people over at App of the Day have crunched the numbers and, using data available from Apple and other sources, broken down the iOS app landscape. They have also created an elegant infographic to visualize the data. Some of the results might surprise you.

“Using a variety of sources including Apple’s RSS feeds and search APIs, we put together a collection of data that we then analyzed to produce the infographic,” founder Jordan Satok explained to us.

According to App of the Day’s analysis, 67% of applications in the App Store (App Store) are paid apps, and 50% of all apps (not just paid applications) cost less than $3.00. The vast majority of these apps are for the iPhone — a whopping 85% are iPhone-only, while another 8% are “universal” apps for iPad and iPhone (iPhone).

One surprise is that books beat out games as the top category for apps in Apple’s marketplace. The reason for the dominance of books in the App Store is due to one developer who has over 7,000 book apps in the iOS App Store alone. Entertainment, education and lifestyle rounded out the top five categories.

Finally, App of the Day analyzed the average prices of apps based on category. Book apps cost an average of $5, while the price of an iOS game (paid and free combined) hovered right around the $1 mark. Unsurprisingly, the most expensive category of apps was the medical sector, whose average price is in the $7 range.

We have included App of the Day’s infographic below. Do any of these App Store stats stand out to you? Let us know in the comments.

(For Me, I just download the free apps, if it costs, I maybe turn to Android market. Becauses I have an iPhone 4 and Motorola XT 702. But I would never turn down the cost iPad Video Converter, iPhone 4 Ringtone Maker and DVD to iPhone 4 Converter, I think they're worth being paid for.)

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