Recently, at the Mobile World Congress, Dutch analytics company Distimo gave a special presentation called “Mobile Application Stores – State of Play.” Distimo tracks and trends app purchases and downloads from app stores for the six largest mobile operating systems: Android, Apple, BlackBerry, Nokia, Palm and Windows. Their findings were sometimes obvious and sometimes shocking.
As everyone could guess, Apple was the top dog for the total number of apps in their store, with over 150,000 available. Android was second with just under 20,000 and the next closest, Nokia, weighing in at a mere 6,118. Apple again leads the pack at almost 14,000 new apps per month, with Android again coming in at second place with just over 3,000 new apps per month.
The real story is about the percentage of free vs. paid apps, in which Android took a huge lead, with an amazing 57% of all Android apps being free. Palm hit second at 32% with Apple and Blackberry in a tight struggle for third place at 25% and 24%, respectively. Android’s overwhelming victory in this aspect of apps is contributed to the the OS being open source and Google’s desire to allow even the most casual developer to submit apps to their Market.
As for the average cost of all paid apps, Android is right there with its competition at $3.27. Apple is at $3.62 and Palm came in at the lowest with an average of $2.53. Windows was on the high side with an average cost of all paid apps at $6.99; ironic since they also only had 693 apps in their Market when this study was completed.
A few other findings from the presentation worth noting include:
- 65% of the publishers in the Google Anroid Market are located in the United States
- Over 1,600 developers have apps in multiple stores
- Apple has a presence in 77 countries with their app store; Android is only in 11 countries
It looks like Android is going to start giving Apple a real run for their money, literally. With Android having the relative fastest growth month to month, will Apple be able to hold onto their lead and will the other manufacturers be able to keep up? Leave us your thoughts in the comments.
Source: AndroidandMe