Apple's is Huge, but Palm's is Rapidly Growing; We're Talking Apps Here!
posted Friday Feb 26, 2010 by Nicholas DiMeo
You know we here at PLuGHiTz Live! just love numbers. So when our fellow techies at Distimo came out with an application store study, we just had to share the news! However, we have to point out that they may seem a little bit Android-biased. They reported that the Android Market is expanding by more than 3000 apps per month, which is about 15% of the total applications available for the platform. Kudos to Android for stepping up to fight the Apple app store, but most of us on our show have Palm Pres, and because of that, we found some other numbers to be as equally exciting.
On January 1st, 2010, the webOS App Catalog hit 1000 apps. Awesome, right? Well, it gets better. Since then, over 500 apps have joined in on the fun, keeping a pace of 10 apps per day, or 300 apps per month. That means a 20% growth, which after I have checked in with our resident accountant Jon, is more than 15%. So take that, Android!
I think I found the reason to Android's huge number increase though. They have the highest ratio of free apps to paid, at 57%, where Palm only has 32%. As far as Apple, they check in with 25%. Granted, Android has no approval process, whereas Palm has a small, but effective one, and Apple's is like trying to get approved for clearance at a White House dinner...oh, wait.
However, there are other app stores out there as well, and this study covered all of them. Let's not forget about the BlackBerry store, which has been out since before John McCain invented their devices, the Windows Mobile store, and Nokia's Ovi store, and they all were averaged to get the average cost of an app for a mobile device, which is $4.69. However, the BlackBerry store had the highest average at a crazy $8.26, Windows Mobile stands at $6.99 and our beloved Palm was the lowest at only $2.53! So, to reiterate but change the target: take that, Apple!
I think the number that stood out the most though is the price across the platforms for the same app, IM+. Apple's version will run you $4.99, the Pre's costs $9.99 but if you want instant messaging on your BlackBerry, be ready to fork out a crazy $29.99! Guess you should stick to emailing, huh?
