One More Look at App Prices...

The startup found that more than half of mobile apps are priced below or equal to $2 in Android Market, Apple’s App Store for iPhone and iPad, Nokia’s Ovi Store and Palm’s App Catalog. The exceptions to the rule: BlackBerry App World (which doesn’t allow apps priced below $2.99) and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

As mentioned earlier, the research found that more than 50% of apps get priced below or equal to $2.00 in most stores. Zooming in on the different App Store versions, the research shows that the percentage of applications priced $0.99 ($0 – $1) is much higher in the App Store for iPhone than in the App Store for iPad. The percentage of applications priced $1.99 ($1 – $2) is similar between these two stores, while the percentage of applications priced higher than $3.00 and below or equal to $10.00 is higher in the Apple App Store for iPad than in the Apple App Store for iPhone.

Android Market sticks out with a 57% share of free applications, way more than what the other stores average. Most of them clearly circle around 25% free vs. 75% paid, according to the research findings. In fact, the only other app store with a share of free apps larger than 1/3 is Palm’s App Catalog.

Android is now the second-largest application store with 19, 297 apps. It's still a far cry from Apple's 150,998 apps, though. And other competitors are farther still. Ovi, we were surprised to discover, is the third largest with 6,118 apps available while Blackberry has a respectable 4,756. Palm has only 1,492 and Windows has 693. Apple is also the fastest growing store with a shocking 13,865 new applications added per month. Android's growth is picking up too - they now have 3,005 new apps per month (15%). Relative to the number of apps housed, Android is actually the fastest growing store.

The average price of all paid applications and the 100 most popular paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPad ($4.65) is higher than in the Apple App Store for iPhone ($4.01). However, the average price of the 100 top grossing applications is higher on the Apple App Store for iPhone.