On July 11, 2008, when Apple announced their 3G iPhone, they simultaneously opened the App store. By December, 2008, 300 million applications had been downloaded. By January, 2009, the App Store had over 15,000 applications and just three months later, in March 2009, it has already jumped to 25,000, reports MocoNews.
The most popular pricepoint is $0.99, not free.
Some 10,274 applications cost $0.99 versus 6,044 that are free. Unlike the BlackBerry applications, which cost a minimum of $2.99, 80 percent of iPhone apps are $1.99 or less.
VentureBeat uses public information and findings from 148Apps to analyze pricing and popularity trends.
How much would it cost to buy every single iPhone application? At least $71,000, says 148Apps
The $9.99 app are holding their own, reports Venture Beat. It’s currently the sixth most popular price point, with over 700 apps selling at that price.
The most popular category by far is “games” with 5,263 apps, followed by “entertainment” with 3,497 apps. The third most popular category is Books, with over 2,405 book apps in the App Store. The least popular app category? Weather. Smartphones are driving the mobile games market, says ComScore/M:Metrics. The number of mobile game downloaders grew 17 percent between Nov 2007 and Nov 2008,
A survey of 235 smartphone users by ABI Research last November found that 16.5 percent spent between $100 and $499.
Global Intelligence Alliance Group says Apple’s App Store is ahead of Android by Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and Ovi by Nokia, based on its timeliness and number, variety and appeal of applications. Other mobile application stores include those from Google’s Android, Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft:
- Google’s Android Market recently allowed paid applications (although users of the Dev Phone found out they could not view any).
- Nokia’s Ovi Store has one of the most advanced applications stores. In addition to selling apps, the store has access to other content and will have the capability of making recommendations based on a person’s location.
- RIM’s Upcoming Blackberry App World uses PayPal and lists a wide range of applications that will be available at launch, from consumer to enterprise, such as games, social networks and stock market trackers.
- The Windows Mobile 6.5 store will provide the ability to browse and download applications from their Windows Mobile 6.5 phone. Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Marketplace for Mobile is an application store and targets other new devices.
- Samsung launched a new mobile application store at Mobile World Congress on Feb. 16. It is expected to reach millions of handsets and provide an over-the-air way for mobile users to browse, purchase, download, and install applications,
- Palm’s new WebOS runs on the Palm Pre. Developers will use Mojo, WebOS’s application framework, to develop WebOS applications using standard technologies such as HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.
Sprint hopes their Palm Pre with its webOS will lead it back to prominence as an alternative to AT&T’s iPhone, Verizon’s BlackBerry Storm and T-Mobile’s Android G1.
Ethan Nicholas raked in $600,000 in a single month with a single iPhone game, says Wired. His tank artillery game called iShoot, rose to No. 1 in the App Store, earning him $37,000 in a single day.
Until recently, there has been no realistic way for individual programmers to make serious money on their own. Most of the software market is dominated by big companies, and the traditional distribution method for independent developers — shareware — isn’t conductive to striking it rich.
By contrast, Apple’s iTunes App Store — and now the Android Market — provide a platform for marketing, selling and distributing software; all a developer needs to provide is a good idea and some working code. The Guardian explains How to become an iPhone developer in eight easy steps.
Worldwide smartphone sales totaled 32.2 million units in the second quarter, 2008, according to Gartner, up 15.7% from the same period last year.
By 2012, Strategy Analytics projects that smartphones will comprise 30% of all handsets shipped, or about 452 million out of 1.5 billion handsets. By then Symbian will still hold 39% of the smartphone OS market, with Linux/Android at 22% and Apple at 18%.
Related Dailywireless articles include; Android Market: Open for Business, Mobile World Congress: Handsets, iPhone: Money Machine, Palm Pre: Looking Good, iPhone Apps May Cost $30K to Develop, iPhone: 10 Million Sold, Apps Store: Red Hot, Mobile World Congress: HSPA, WiMAX & LTE Faceoff, Nvidia: Turbo Boost for Android and WinMobile, Netbooks Embed Broadband, The 8 Megapixel Phone, Handsets: Open, Open, Open, Cisco Beamforms Russia & Kazakhstan, TeleNav Does Turn-By-Turn on Android and 2009 Mobile World Congress.
