Latest insights across the mobile app store landscape
January 28, 2010 by Lisa Oshima | Developers, Mobile, ResearchThe mobile app store landscape is growing and evolving quickly, and keeping up with the latest information when you’ve already got a day job is tough. One of the most useful ways to keep up-to-date is to watch what some of the mobile analytics vendors are writing about on their blogs and white papers. One of the best and most recent cross app store information resources I’ve found is from Distimo.
Distimo recently published a useful overview of the current landscape across major app stores including Apple App Store, Blackberry App World, Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. You can download the full report here.
Among the things I found most interesting in the Distimo report were that the UK represents 12% of publishers on the Android Market versus 20% in continental Europe, 65% in the US, and 3% in Japan. This is a strong showing, but I expect that this percentage will grow quickly as the market opportunity with Android rises.
Unsurprisingly, given the strength of both Euro and Pound currencies, the Distimo report shows that apps that originate in Europe have a higher average price than apps developed elsewhere. Distimo found that across app stores, European developers charge 49% more for their mobile applications than developers in the US, with an average price per app at $4.42. The UK is not far behind Europe, charging an average of $3.31 per app. Blackberry App World and Windows Marketplace for Mobile had the highest average app prices, at $8.26 and $6.99, respectively. This isn’t a shock, given the cost and effort required to develop for both platforms. I’d actually expected Ovi Store apps to be more expensive for that very reason. However, Distimo found that apps on Ovi Store, Apple App Store and Android Market had an average price of $3.50 each.