The Canalys company, specialized in analyzing applications from App Stores around the world, made a brief analyzes of the price of applications from Android Market and App Store. They compared the first 100 paid applications from the Android Market with the first 100 paid applications from the App Store and realized that the Android Market has applications 2.5 times more expensive. More precisely, the total amount of the 100 applications from the Android Market was $374.37, with an average of $3.74, while the price of the first 100 paid applications from the App Store was $147 with an average of $1.47.
Canalys today released the results of a recent App Interrogator survey of the top paid-for and free apps from the leading consumer app stores to clients of its App Store Analysis service. The survey reveals that the top paid-for Android apps are priced dramatically higher than those on iOS for the iPhone. In the US, to purchase the top 100 paid-for apps in the Android Market would cost $374.37 – an average of $3.74 per app – more than 2.5 times the cost of the top 100 paid-for iPhone apps. The top 100 iPhone apps would cost $147.00, or $1.47 on average per app.
Doing an even more detailed analysis, Canalys discovered that the first 10-20 applications in the Android Market have prices between $3.47 and $4.09, while the first 10-20 paid applications in the App Store have prices between $0.99 and $1.04. The difference is enormous and proves that although there are more paid applications in the App Store, their price is much lower than those in the Android Market. This price difference could have a very simple and plausible explanation: fragmentation. Applications in the Android Market must be compatible with an extremely diverse range of products, while in the App Store there is only one format for iPhones/iPod Touches and another for iPad tablets. We take into account the fact that applications made for iPhone 3GS work without problems on iPhone 4 and that Retina Ready applications already have graphics for iPhone 3GS.
