App Revenue For Apple Devices Exceeds Other Online Stores
Software developers seeking to earn a living creating games and applications for the mobile market are increasingly leaning towards Apple’s iOS platform for its more reliable and lucrative business, Chloe Albanesius reports for PC Mag.
Although the overall numbers of mobile OS users are on Android-based devices rather than Apple’s iOS platform in the US, Apple’s App Store generates four times as much revenue than Google’s Android Market, according to a Wednesday report from Distimo.
Counting total revenue generated by the 200 highest-grossing apps, Apple iPad and iPhone App Store purchases beat the Android Market, Distimo said in its 2011 App Year in Review, with in-app purchases becoming an increasing revenue for developers.
“2011 was the year where in-app purchases and the freemium business model became one of the most important monetization strategies for developers,” Distimo concluded. “Half of the revenue of the 200 top grossing apps in the Apple App Store for iPhone is now generated by freemium apps.”
“This proportion is even higher in the Google Android Market where 65 percent of the revenue from the top grossing apps is generated by freemium apps.”
Freemium refers to apps that are free to download, but include the option of in-app purchases to continue with game play or add features, for example.
However Apple’s App Store did see a drop in downloads twice this past year. Once in February preceding the introduction of the iPad2 and again in October before the iPhone 4S launched. Each sales slowdown was followed by an increase in downloads immediately following the sales of the devices at stores, reports Lance Whitney for CNet.
Beyond Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market, Distimo’s full 2011 report examined Amazon’s Appstore, BlackBerry App World, Nokia’s Ovi Store, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. Among those, almost all doubled the number of apps being offered this year.
Collectively, the major app stores now offer more than 1 million apps. But Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 store showed the greatest relative growth in 2011, increasing its available apps by more than 400 percent, noted Distimo.
So what are people actually downloading? Gaming apps downloads are “most robust and thus the most important,” Distimo said. “The games category is the single largest app category in most stores, and also generates the most downloads as well.”
Distimo posted its top 10 apps of the year by number of downloads, three of which were versions of Angry Birds. They include: Angry Birds; Facebook; Skype; Angry Birds Rio; Google Maps; iBooks; Angry Birds Seasons; Fruit Ninja; Talking Tom Cat; and Twitter.
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